Malaria remains a serious problem for people living in developing countries. The statistics show that every year the disease kills about 400,000 people, mostly children and pregnant women, in Africa (McNeil, 2020). Regardless of multiple attempts to improve the situation, it remains complex, as there are still many new cases every year. The epidemiological triad of the disease presupposes that there is a host, or a human being, an agent, plasmodium falciparum, and the environment, or the areas characterized by the presence of mosquitoes (Henderson et al., 2020). The elimination of one of the components of the tirade should help to decrease rates. Malaria causes most deaths during rainy months; however, during dry seasons, parasites are carried from one human host to another. It becomes a serious barrier to the improvement of the situation and protecting people in developing states.
However, recent research shows that the parasite has a unique mechanism of survival. It can undergo a genetic change and hide in a persons’ bloodstream undetected (McNeil, 2020). The given discovery might change the vision of the disease and how communities can struggle with it. For vast territories of Africa, rainy seasons can be fatal as they cause malaria; however, it is possible to reduce deaths by using the results of blood tests to detect people with parasites and provide them with additional protection (Sauboin et al., 2019). At the same time, for this region, the task might be complex because of the poor accessibility of health services and the low level of income (Sauboin et al., 2019). In such a way, the new investigations introduce new information that can help to struggle with the disease, but there is still much to be done.
References
Henderson, S. J., Belemvire, A., Nelson, R., Linn, A., Moriarty, L. F., Brofsky, E., Diaw, M., & Gittelman, D. (2020). Advancing malaria prevention and control in Africa through the peace corps-US President’s malaria initiative partnership.Global Advances in Health and Medicine, 9. Web.
McNeil, D. (2020). A malaria mystery, partly solved: What happens when the rains end? The New York Times. Web.
Sauboin, C., Van Vlaenderen, I., Van Bellinghen, L.-A., & Standaert, B. (2019). Reducing malaria mortality at the lowest budget: An optimization tool for selecting malaria preventative interventions applied to Ghana.MDM Policy & Practice, 4(2). Web.