Essay On Science Reports Research On Malaria

Essay On Malaria Disease Essay On Science Reports Research On Malaria

These was confusion about malaria. Up to recent times people thought that malaria was caused by the unhealthy mists (called -miasma-) that rise from marshy ground at night. The very name "malaria- shows this; for it means -bad air-. But it has been proved that the culprit is not marsh fog, but an insect, the mosquito. It is the bite of mosquitoes, or rather or one kind of mosquito, the Anopheles, that gives people malaria.

Like most other diseases, malaria is due to a tiny germ. This germ multiplying in a person's blood gives him malaria. Now when a mosquito bites a person that has malaria, and sucks his blood, it takes in some malaria germs. When it bites other persons after that, it injects into their blood some of these malaria germs. which give those thus bitten malaria in their turn.

So mosquitoes are carriers of malaria from one person to another. The only real cure for malaria is quinine. When you take quinine, it gets into your blood, and kills the malaria germs there. People who live in malarious districts take quinine as preventative; so that, if they get bitten by mosquitoes, the malaria germs may be killed as soon as they get into the blood before they can breed and multiply. They also take care to sleep under mosquitoes-nets. These protect them from getting bitten by mosquitoes, which are always most active at night.

But the only way to stamp out malaria is to get rid of the mosquitoes. How can this be done? Well, the mosquito begins its life as a tiny grub in water. These grubs are hatched from eggs which the female mosquito lays on the surface of stagnant water. The only way of stamping out mosquitoes is to do away with the mosquitoes' breeding places.

So, standing pools must be drained dry, ditches of stagnant water cleaned out, and wells and rain-water tanks kept covered. When a pool cannot be drained, its surface should be covered with kerosene oil. This prevents mosquitoes from laying their eggs there, and it kills the mosquito grubs in the water by preventing them coming up to the surface to breathe.

If such measures were carried out systematically in any malarious district, mosquitoes would in time be stamped out, as they have been in Panama; and malaria, which is such a scourge in Pakistan. would trouble the people no more.