Slashdot Mirror
Malaria Has Been Eliminated In Europe (qz.com)
An anonymous reader writes: Quartz reports that "Malaria cases in Europe have dropped from a peak of over 90,000 in 1995 to zero in 2015, according to the World Health Organization," who calls the "extraordinary but fragile" achievement a step towards eliminating malaria everywhere. Nine European countries had reported malaria cases, but agreed to focus their efforts on a full elimination of the mosquito-borne disease. "The WHO attributes success to improved surveillance systems, better mosquito control, and greater collaboration across borders," reports Quartz, noting it now provides a blueprint for other countries fighting the disease -- and a boost in morale.
No, there is not a large pool of the malaria parasite in the thames valley. This is a stupid statement. Malaria doesn't lie dormant in the environment, waiting for the right conditions to appear. It can only survive in the host or vector. The only place it can lie 'dormant' is within the human host. Given there have been no cases of malaria transmission in England for a very long time we can safely say that there is no 'large pool of the malaria microbe'. Your statement that winters being too cold to allow mosquito and parasite to mix together clearly indicates you've got no clue what you're talking about. The reason that cold weather prevents malaria is that the adult mosquitos are dead, only the eggs are present (and malaria doesn't live in mosquito eggs). If the adults are dead there are no transmission events because there are no mosquitos around to bite.
No, there IS a large reservoir in the Thames Valley. Sorry.
And I never said it was dormant, I said that there was no vector to convert it to humans: mozzies. They need a certain amount of temperature for a minimum period of time for the parasite causing malaria in humans to grow to an infectious host in the mozquito.
I'm not sure if you're trolling or not, but I'll reply on the off chance you are just misinformed.
Plasomdium spp., the causal agent of malaria, lives in mosquitos and humans. It does not live anywhere else, not in the water or ground or air. It reproduces in humans and is spread to a mosquito when a person is bitten. The parasite is the re-transmitted back to a human when that mosquito bites again. The parasite does not require a certain temperature to grow to be infectious within the mosquito. The ONLY way the malaria parasite can be transmitted to a mosquito is via a human host. If no humans within a region have malaria, then there is no way for malaria transmission to occur, and thus no malaria.
Following on from this, if there is no malaria in humans, the only disease reservoir will be the mosquito. If there is 0 prevalence of malaria within a region for longer than the lifespan of a mosquito (typically ~50 days) the malaria parasite will be eliminated.
Malaria isn't just a tropical disease. When I lived in Ottawa (most definitely not tropical), I went by the cemetery to those who built the Rideau canal, approximately 1000 people died building it, half of those from malaria. In 1830 one section of the canal had almost 800 cases of malaria out of 1300 workers. We just DDTed the hell out of everything in the 50's and 60's and pretty much wiped out malaria in North America
Malaria used to be widespread in countries like the Netherlands, which is decidedly non-tropical. They managed to eradicate it by treating patients and killing mosquitos using DDT. The reason it's now a "tropical" disease is because tropical countries are poor.