Flooding and Malaria

The article I'm blogging about I found here on allafrica.com. It's entitled Nigeria: Flooding Will Increase Incidence of Malaria, Vermin. It's discussing some flooding that has occured recently in Nigeria and all the problems that can occur along with flooding, one problem being the increase of Malaria outbreaks. Malaria is a disease caused by a parasite that is transferred to humans when bit by the Anopheles mosquito. There are 300 to 500 million cases of Malaria every year and more than 1 million deaths from it. As most people know, flooding causes increases in water which in turn causes increases in bugs and insects; such as mosquitos. Mosquitos can cause a variety of different diseases but in Africa, the biggest problem is Malaria. It not only effects the people infected, but it effects the economy of the people as well. It starts out effecting the individual because the person is sick, they are unable to work which means they are unable to make an income and if the person infected is the primary "bread-winner" of the household, the whole family suffers because it is not only costing them money to go to a health-care facility to get treated, but they are unable to put food on the table because they aren't working. Within the community, it is effected by the flood itself destroying property and agriculture and multiplying pests like insects and rats. So while a flood can cause a whole array of things to go bad, Malaria is an especially dangerous thing to have numbers increase.

I chose Malaria as a topic this week because it is such a huge problem in Africa (as well as other tropic places) and because I also recently learned some things about it in my Microbiology class. It really is such a dangerous disease because it can be especially difficult to protect yourself against. Any mosquito around could be carrying it and it's really hard to protect yourself from mosquitos 24/7 and it already effects possibly 500 million people a year so massive floods could cause the numbers to raise even higher. It's effects can take over quite fast and once you get to a certain point, there can be nothing done for you which is why the death rate stands at about 1 to 2 million a year. To me, I think that Malaria should be the number one disease researched and the number one thing that scientists should want to find a vaccine for because there's just no controlling it. It not only effects Africa, but countries all over the world, including the United States. You can't stop mosquitos from biting someone like you can stop the spread of HIV/AIDS. Malaria is not spread from humans to humans, only by blood transfusions or sometimes from mother to un-born baby but it's certainly nothing like the spread of HIV/AIDS to other humans. It's really something that grabs my attention and I wish I could do something to help solve this problem.

Here's a link to a short 10 minute video about Malaria. It's not discussing Malaria in Africa, but instead in America. It really can help you understand how it can be spread and the disease process itself.