Thursday, August 18, 2011

Mosquito 101

Mosquitoes. Little sneaky, blood sucking creatures that descend when summer arrives. I'm sure everyone has been bitten by these pests before, but how serious is the problem?

Malaria is a major disease responsible for 225 millions of cases worldwide, though most of these victims are in Africa. In decades, man kind has been fighting to defeat this parasite.

First, a little explanation of how malaria is transmitted. It all begins when a female mosquito bites into a human's skin. While sucking out the blood it transfers its young, called sporozoites, which then live in the liver until it's ready to produce asexually (producing only in one sex, in this case, females). It then advances to the next stage of merozoites, and travels out of the liver and invades healthy cells, and overtake them for further reproduction of dividing. When it has matured, it will continue the cycle and bite its next victim.

This problem is the most serious and common in Africa, that's why organizations have worked hard to prevent this from occurring. Nets sprayed with insecticide has cut off the infection rate by half, since being distributed a few years ago.


Unfortunately, during this period, mosquitoes have also developed immunity to the pesticide Deltametrin , the percentage has risen from the previous 8% to an astonishing 48%.

Also, after a period of  protection from the parasite, when exposed again, the human immune system weakens, and the parasite comes back harder than ever.

What lies ahead about the malaria control in Africa? Hopefully, better prevention methods. But only time will tell.


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