Malaria

Malaria is a mosquito-borne infectious disease affecting humans and other animals caused by parasitic protozoans (a group of single-celled microorganisms) belonging to the Plasmodium type. Malaria causes symptoms that typically include fever, feeling tired, vomiting, and headaches. __NOTOC__ C Bringing to his work the utmost vitality of a strong race and the highest aspirations for economic property, albeit attained through a Homeric struggle, man in the Amazon (...) will quite soon regret his own daring, upon the destruction of all his accumulated energies. Entire waves of people from Ceará, valiant people who exemplify our national resistance and tenacity, are decimated by malaria in a short space of time! Those who do not perish, those whose uncertain fate was less brutal, these return, bearing the remains of their sickness in the form of permanent organic lesions. Carlos Chagas (1878-1934). https://books.scielo.org/id/tpyj4/pdf/kropf-9786557080009-11.pdf Carlos Chagas, scientist of Brazil 2009 978-85-7541-188-9 Fiocruz https://web.archive.org/web/20200507143707/https://books.scielo.org/id/tpyj4/pdf/kropf-9786557080009.pdf 2020-05-07 10.7476/9786557080009 177 Simone Petraglia Kropf Aline Lopes de Lacerda 24816931M 1 Expedition to the Amazon Diane Grosklaus Whitty I Malaria is a focal disease whose distribution is influenced by literally dozens of factors related both to human, mosquito, and parasite populations and to the environment. Institute of Medicine (U.S.). Committee for the Study on Malaria Prevention and Control: Status Review and Alternative Strategies Malaria: Obstacles and Opportunities http://books.google.com/books?id=HUYrAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA212 1 January 1991 National Academies 212 R I have failed in finding parasites in mosquitoes fed on malaria patients, but perhaps I am not using the proper kind of mosquito. Ronald Ross, "Letter to his wife" (14 Aug 1897), Memoirs: With a Full Account of the Great Malaria Problem and its Solution (1923), p. 221 This day relenting GodHath placed within my handA wondrous thing; and GodBe praised. At His command,Seeking His secret deedsWith tears and toiling breath,I find thy cunning seeds,O million-murdering Death.I know this little thingA myriad men will save.O Death, where is thy sting?Thy victory, O Grave?[Poem he wrote following the discovery that the malaria parasite was carried by the amopheline mosquito] Ronald Ross, In Exile (1906) T I can think of a few microorganisms, possibly the tubercle bacillus, the syphilis spirochete, the malarial parasite, and a few others, that have a selective advantage in their ability to infect human beings, but there is nothing to be gained, in an evolutionary sense, by the capacity to cause illness or death. Pathogenicity may be something of a disadvantage for most microbes. Lewis Thomas, Lives of a Cell: Notes of a Biology Watcher (1978), pp. 73–74 External links Category:Malaria