What Is Malaria?

Malaria is an infectious disease caused by the protozoan parasite belonging to the species Plasmodium. The parasite lives in the stomach of the Anopheles mosquito, which is unaffected by its passenger. However, when the mosquito bites a human being, it injects the parasite into the person's blood stream.

Once in the blood, the parasite travels to the liver where it multiplies. In large numbers it then attacks red blood cells and uses these for a second stage of replication. The blood cells swell and burst as the parasites multiply. This cycle of liver to red blood cell takes about 4 days and, every time a large number of red blood cells rupture, the body experiences a violent fever.

Mosquitoes that bite infected people pick up the parasite and the cycle of infection and reinfection makes malaria very difficult to get rid of. It can be treated using quinine based drugs and artemether and the search is on for better drugs and methods of treating and preventing malaria.

Malaria is among the diseases that were previously considered as among the fatal ones and it is only recently that it has been being treated as a non-fatal disease. The disease is being spread when a particular type of mosquito bites a person and when the mosquito anopheles bites a person it takes out the protozoa from the affected person and repeat the process to inject it to other person to spread the disease.
      
When it comes to the literal meaning of the term, you can say that it is a kind of bad air. The word 'mal' is being used in several words to describe the meaning of something bad and you can find its use in malnutrition and malpractices. The next term is a simple term for air; literally malaria is bad air.
       
To avoid this disease you need to take some precaution and you must take care of the cleanliness in your vicinity. If you take care of the cleanliness you it hardly possible that you caught by malaria.

It is necessary to know that malaria is a disease that is spread by the female Anopheles Mosquito. Mosquitoes generally feed on plant sap but females are in need of nourishment in the form of blood when pregnant. It affects nearly four hundred million people world wide. It has plagued the human race since over fifty thousand years. The disease affects most of sub Saharan Africa, South and South East Asia, Central and South America It is because of the topographic conditions existing in these places that malaria is more prevalent.    
Malaria causes extremely high temperature and shivering. A person generally requires hospitalization due to deteriorating health and weakness. The dangers associated with malaria are increasing due to the fact that several strands of the disease are developing immunity to medication. At present there are no vaccines that have been manufactured to prevent the spread of the disease.

A disease caused by a parasite that is transmitted by a specific type of mosquito.  So, you get the parasite when bitten by a mosquito.  The mosquitoes that transmit the parasite live in tropical areas.  This disease lives in your red blood cells in your blood if you get it and it causes fever, chills, weight loss, etc.  It is a very serious disease.  If you are traveling to certain areas in the world, people get various medications like malarone to take to prevent the disease from occurring if they get bitten by infected mosquitoes.  It is a very serious illness and affects many people living in certain parts of the world in the tropical areas.