Malaria Epidemiology: Sources of Infection and Prevention Methods

Malaria is an infection which has high risk of raising it's head in our country at any time, though it belongs to diseases common in tropics. The parasite causing the malarial infection comes under protozoans as genus Plasmodium which group is responsible for the spreading of the disease. The parasites of this genus are having a wide range of vertebrates hosts that are including human, non human, primates as well as birds and reptiles.

The vectors are mosquitoes which comes under the genus Anopheles qulicifacies and the disease is caused due to a feminine mosquito biting which introduce sporozoites of parasitic types in to the circulation.

This disease is continuously affecting the health conditions of the diseased people and it may lead to severe type of economic deficits ultimately leads to lower the health status as well as it may become a huge issue in achieving the developmental goals of the nation.Most of the deaths which are caused by the malaria are almost concentrated over the African countries and among the documented number of cases,the most common form of parasite in the African continent is p.falciparum.

The malaria, fatal form of infection is mostly affects the population that includes infancy, young children usually under the age of five years, pregnant mothers as well as immuno compromised people like HIV infected people. So these populations are at higher risk of being malarial diseased people than the others.

Mainly there are four species of the malarial parasites. From them Plasmodium vivax and Plasmodium falciparum are the frequently reported species in the past malarial history in Sri Lanka. Sri Lanka was declared by the world health organisation as one of country which has eliminated the disease malaria in September, 2016 after a huge antimalarial campaign. In that period the last case which was documented as locally transmitted malarial parasites was reported from the year 2012 in October.

Before the declaration of the eliminated stage of the disease, our country has a long standing past history of the malaria which may run about more decades. Sri Lanka has had a very hard time of having devastating epidemic among the country in the nineteenth century which was lead more and more people to die and also the remained people were migrated to the areas which were not having malarial infection at that time period.

As our health system was much more strengthen to fight against the ongoing infection they has introduced DDT for the community as method of controlling the malaria that may hopefully reduce the incidence.

After some period of time there was massive decreasment of the malarial cases which are reported among the country which was thought to be due to the effect of DDT and also due to the eradication programme that was conducted.

But re occurence of the malaria was reported again in the later period of that century. There was identified species of the parasites which were resistant to the DDT. Malathion was introduced thereafter as the vector control method and there was a significant effect until it also leaded to develop the resistant.

Until the introduction of the artemisenin combined therapy the health ministry has conducted some programmes specially vector control methods. After 2012 there was no locally acquired case of malaria but near to hundred cases were detected which were imported cases.

But there is huge risk of re-emerging the malaria in our country due to numerous reasons. Because we are having the vector that is responsible for the disease, our country is always at risk of develop malaria because there are vector species Anopheles culicifacies arises in Sri Lanka and almost all the countries which are surrounding the country are having still the malarial epidemics. So if the parasite is introduced to our country by any foreign country traveller who is infected by the parasite, there is a huge risk of having an epidemic due to the presence of the vectors.

The most recent two cases which was suspected as locally acquired, has been alarmed our health system about a future risk of developing a malaria epidemic. So the each and every person of the country have to be alarmed to seek medical care as soon as possible when they get the early signs of the disease malaria: intermittent fever with chills and rigours are the symptoms to be alerted to get the medical care. We will able to maintain the eliminated stage of malaria if the people of our country is well knowledgeable about the disease and obey the accepted measures regarding prevention of the disease occurence.