I am Malaria
I am Malaria, an infectious disease. Every year I kill
approximately one point three million humans, and infect another
350-500 million. My work is mostly in the tropics where
favorable climates and lifestyles aid in my process. Over 85% of
deaths occur in Sub-Saharan Africa. Do I have your attention?
Why I exist - I exist because as a result of the
protozoan parasite. My mode of transit between humans for
transmission is by mosquitos. Mosquitos are favorable as they
are vast and persistent in their work, as I am in mine. Although
everyone is vulnerable to my attacks, it is pregnant women and
infants under the age of five that I have the most success with.
A french army doctor names Charles Louis Alphonse Laveran first
discovered me, and was awarded the Nobel prize for Physiology in
1907. (I am still waiting for my turn to win the award). It was
Alphonse, Charles that was the first person to be able to
describe my life cycle, as I develop in the bodies of mosquitos
and of my many human hosts.
Do you have me? - Your starting to get a feeling for who
I am; but how do you know if you have me? Trust me you'll know!
I can cause several things, aka Symtoms
of Malaria. My specialties include but are not limited to:
fever, shivering, arthralgia, vomiting, anemia, and if your
looking for a really fun one: convulsions. Sometimes individuals
will even feel a tingling sensation in their skin.
Why should you be listening to me? If it isn't my sleek
lines or ingenuity you should be paying attention because of
numbers. The number of victims every year that are infected with
my virus. Infections are dangerous and complications with me,
malaria, include coma and death if untreated. Young children
again are especially vulnerable.
My specialty - Like I mentioned before I have chosen
mosquitos and in particular the females ones to get around. When
a female bites a person(if they have the correct sporozoites in
their salivary glands, they will transfer the me, the virus,
into the remote human body. I will then work my way into the
liver where I will multiply inside of the hepatic liver cells.
It is there where I will turn into merozoites, and enter into
red blood cells, where I will continue to multiple. Sometimes if
a relationship goes sour witin a red blood cell, I will break
out, and move on. It is at this point of "break out" in which
you will begin to experience waves of fever. These waves
generally occur every 2-3 days. Ingenuity is what I call it when
I stick inside of the liver and the red blood cells so that your
immune sytem cannot ask me to leave. It is when relationships
are good and I remain in the blood cells long enough to create
surface protiens so that I can stick onto the walls of blood
vessels, otherwise I see my fate, and am destroyed in the
spleen. Because my surface protiens come in so many variations
they can easily out smart your immune system, and I remain. Even
when your immune system catched on to what I'm up to, I've
already put on a new coat, and guess what. It'll have to start
from scratch. You can see how me hanging about in your blood
vessels causes complications in your system.