Mosquito Season...

The deadly female Anopheles mosquito

The last few weeks have been quite memorable for the dramatic influx of mosquitoes into Mukinge. I’m not too sure exactly why, as the rainy season hasn’t started yet. However the locals assure me that these nasty little critters are unusually bad at the moment.

Our bathroom at night has resembled something of a war-zone at times recently, as I’ve taken to spraying it with insecticide and then shutting the door for a few minutes. My current record is 28 dead mozzies after such a on one night, in the approximately 2m by 3m room!

Unfortunately this invasion has inevitably brought many new malaria cases to the hospital. Dramatically increasing the numbers of seriously sick children on my paeds ward.

In honesty, until earlier this year, I could probably have filled little more than a postage stamp with what I knew about malaria. Fortunately it’s rarely a problem we encounter in Australia. However having spent many, many days studying this beast of a disease at the trop school in Liverpool, I have developed a keen interest in this fascinating yet deadly disease.

Red blood cells infected with the malaria parasite

I thought that I might put together some “fast facts” on malaria, to hopefully leave all those reading, just a little wiser for reading this post. For those of you who don’t really care much about medicine, please feel free to terminate your reading from now.

Malaria fast facts

• Named from the Italian word for “bad air”
• 2700BC – first described by the ancient Chinese
• 300AD (there or there abouts) – Chinese herbal medicine book describes medicine made from the plant Artemisia annua – from which we now also derive the best treatment for severe malaria
• Early 1600s – Jesuit priests in the New World learn of a medicinal bark from the Cinchona tree – from which quinine (one of the other very good malaria meds) was derived
• 1897-1898 – Sir Ronald Ross (the first lecturer at the Liverpool trop school) discovers that mosquitoes transmit the malaria parasite. Goes on to win the Nobel Prize (one of 4 given out so far for malaria research)
• Caused by 5 parasite species (Plasmodium), which are transmitted to humans by the bite of an infected female anopheline mosquito (fortunately these don’t seem to be the ones annoying us in our home at the moment!)
• Can damage the brain, blood cells, gut, kidneys, liver and lungs
• Causes more than 1,000,000 deaths each year – the majority in children in Africa

The Nobel Prize awarded to Sir Ronald Ross - in the museum at the Liverpool trop school

Needless to say, this disease has occupied quite a lot of my time in 2012. From countless blood smears in the lab at the trop school in Liverpool, to the bedside of the comatose young child on the paeds ward here, this terrible disease is very much a part of my day-to-day reality. And while it is tough to see those so young suffering, I really do feel privileged to have been able to learn so much about malaria this year, and to now be putting this into practise. - d