Mosquitoes, Malaria And Dengue

Mosquitoes live in most regions of the world. They are born into water, yet it does not have to be much, where they spend around two weeks going through the stages of egg, larva and pupa. As an adult, they live for up to another eight weeks.

The mouth parts of mosquitoes have evolved to be specialized in piercing 'skin' and drawing out juices. Males use this aptitude for removing juices from plants, yet females require a blood meal to be able to produce eggs and of the 3,500 species of mosquito worldwide, some species feed on humans.

This trait means that the female mosquito of certain species can become the carrier of a number of infectious diseases. These diseases have an effect on and kill millions of individuals each year. Two of these diseases are malaria and dengue fever

Malaria is brought about by a mosquito infected with eukaryotic protists of the genus Plasmodium biting humans (and one sortnd of monkey). The disease is widespread throughout Africa, the Americas and Asia but it was eliminated from Australia in 1981. Europe used to be infected as well but is now mostly clean of malaria, although not of mosquitoes.

The disease is brought about by the multiplication of the malarial parasites in the red blood cells which produces indications comparable to headaches and fever - something like a bad case of the flu. In acute cases, this can lead to coma and death.

Prevention is far better than cure, so the first thing to do is endeavor to prevent mosquitoes breeding by eradicating unnecessary amounts of water no matter how small and how brackish. Secondly, endeavor to prevent them biting you by using mosquito repellent and mosquito nets treated with insecticide.

There is no long-lasting vaccine that will stop you getting malaria, although there are drugs obtainable to stop travellers getting malaria in the short time. Most kinds of malaria can be treated effectively, although there is evidence of resistance to a number of of the anti-malarial drugs.

Dengue Fever is also spread by certain mosquitoes. The symptoms of dengue vary but they almost always include a headache and a skin rash and occasionally joint pain. The disease is not usually fatal, yet it can be so when it develops into dengue haemorrhagic fever or dengue shock syndrome (which is where blood pressure drops very low causing organs to malfunction).

There are four types of dengue fever. Having had the one, the patient has permanent immunity to that strain, but only temporary immunity to the other three. As with malaria there is no vaccine against dengue. The only attack is to minimize the number of mosquitoes and the number of bites.

Whereas the incidence of infection with malaria is falling, the rate of infection with dengue is rising. Dengue is now endemic in over 110 countries. It usually takes 4-7 days for the disease to show itself after infection, so any flu-like indications showing within a week of returning from an area known to have dengue must be treated gravely, particularly as many GP's in the west might overlook the real source of the problem.

Owen Jones, the writer of this article writes on a number of subjects, but is currently involved with work on mosquito bite allergy problems. If you would like to know more or check out some great offers, please go to our website at Mosquito Bite Swelling.