What is malaria?

Malaria is a life-threatening disease caused by specific parasites that are transmitted by mosquitoes. Once upon a time, it was thought that the disease came from fetid marshes, therefore the name “malaria” meaning “bad air”. Then, in 1880, Dr. Laveran, a French army surgeon in Algeria, first discovered and described the malaria one-cell-parasite called Plasmodium falciparum in the red blood cells. Later on, it turned out that this plasmodium is transmitted from human to human through the bite of a female Anopheles mosquito that needs blood to feed its eggs.
There are four types of human malaria - Plasmodium vivax, Plasmodium falciparum, Plasmodium malariae and Plasmodium ovale. P. vivax and P. falciparum are the most common ones and P. falciparum the deadliest type of infection.

Symptoms appear approximately 9 –14 days after the infectious Anopheles bite, although this may vary with the different plasmodium types. Typical symptoms of a malaria infection are fever, headache, vomiting and other flu-like symptoms. If the disease is not treated, the infection can progress rapidly and can become life threatening. Malaria can kill by infecting and destroying red blood cells (anaemia) and by blocking the capillaries that carry blood to the brain (cerebral malaria) or other important organs.

Malaria, besides HIV/AIDS and tuberculosis, is one of the major public health challenges and dramatically restricts economic development in the poorest countries of the world.