Infectious Diseases Part 2

Malaria is not caused by eating oily food rather it is caused by the micro organisms known as plasmodia transmitted by mosquitoes. The conditions that make malaria to thrive are collections of water, bushes around where we live and poor ventilation in our homes.

Also, those with malaria must be properly treated, so that with the right conditions, we may be able to eradicate malaria because it is possible to eradicate it even in our circumstances.

To eradicate malaria, it needs the political will, the knowledge and the collective efforts of everybody including the government. Before this time, malaria used to be associated with fever,chills,headache,loss of appetite, muscular pains.

In children, malaria can be very severe to the extent that they will start acting as if they are jerking and all of these things make malaria a very uninteresting medical condition to deal with.

Malaria can effect anybody such as the working class, children, pregnant women, elderly people. Nobody is left out when it comes to malaria, because it leaves the whole population vulnerable.

Malaria kills quite unlike the popular belief of”is it not just malaria” and that is why anytime malaria is diagnosed, it must be treated adequately.
It is not every time that one has fever that it equates to malaria, other things can give you fever such as staying out in the sun and having sun stroke can give one fever or Rigors. You can only have malaria when the plasmodium parasite is found in the blood. So, the easiest way to find out is give a drop of your blood for lab test.

When a lab test shows you one or three drops of the parasite in the blood stream, it is known as quantitative test while qualitative test gives you a yes or no response. the disadvantage of the qualitative test is that it can give you a wrong answer by telling you that you have malaria even when you don’t have it. At times, the quantitative test may show one drop of the parasite in the system even when the person is not feeling the symptoms, this is because the body may have acquired some sorts of immunity.

Before this time, the main vaccine given for the treatment of malaria used to Chloroquine but over the years, because of the abuse and mutation in the body of the plasmodium, Chloroquine stopped being very effective although there are still people who react positively to Chloroquine and it happened to be the best treatment for them. To treat malaria adequately now, it is agreed that one must do what is referred to as Artemisinin Combined Therapy(ACT).

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