Malaria
A baby with malaria
(from World Health Organization)
You catch malaria by being bitten by a mosquito that has
malaria parasites living inside it. It doesn't hurt the mosquito.
When the mosquito bites you, the malaria
parasites go from the mosquito's mouth into your blood and then they make
lots more parasites inside your body. If you have malaria, you start to get
fevers and you feel first very hot and then very cold. About one out of
every ten people who caught malaria died of it, especially if they were kids.
More people have probably died from malaria over the
last several thousand years than from any other disease that you can catch.
Malaria probably first got started in West Africa and Central Africa, at
least a hundred and fifty million years ago (150,000,000 BC),
though malaria as we know it today probably wasn't around until about 2000
BC. It got started when people began farming
in Africa, because farming caused people to settle down and live in villages,
and in villages there were a lot of people for mosquitoes to bite, and also
lots of little puddles and ponds and wells for them to lay eggs in. Apparently
malaria was able to get started better in Africa than in other places because in Africa
there weren't very many animals (like cows
or dogs) for the mosquitoes to bite,
so they mostly bit humans and could pass on the malaria parasites.
From its beginnings in Africa, malaria quickly spread
all over Asia and Europe. Sumerian
and Egyptian doctors from about
1500 to 2000 BC described fevers that sound like malaria. In India,
people seem to have been catching malaria by 1000 BC, and malaria was certainly
common in China by 1 AD or so.
Malaria seems to have infected ancient Italy
and Greece during the
Hellenistic period (about 500-1 BC) and then northern Europe not until the
Middle Ages, about 1000-1500
AD. Rice farming, in both China and Europe,
turned out to be an excellent way to spread malaria, and led to big arguments
between rice farmers and public health officials.
When European invaders came to North
America and South America
in the 1500's AD, some of them had malaria, and
American mosquitoes caught the disease by biting these sick people. Then
in the 1700's when European slave traders forced many African
people to come to North
America and South America as slaves,
they also brought malaria with them.
Gradually many places in both North and South America were infested with malaria, and by the 1750's many people in North America caught it. By 1850 there was malaria all over both North and South America. Along with smallpox and measles, malaria was one of the diseases that killed most of the people who lived in North America - the Chinook, the Iroquois, the Cherokee, and other groups.
Gradually many places in both North and South America were infested with malaria, and by the 1750's many people in North America caught it. By 1850 there was malaria all over both North and South America. Along with smallpox and measles, malaria was one of the diseases that killed most of the people who lived in North America - the Chinook, the Iroquois, the Cherokee, and other groups.
By the middle of the 1900's, malaria became less common
in the northern half of the world (North
America, Europe, Russia and northern China). This was mainly because,
thanks to the use of gasoline engines in tractors and farm machinery, most
people lived in cleaner, less crowded places, and most people did not live
or work on farms anymore. But in the southern half of the world (South America,
Africa, India, and south-east Asia), malaria is still killing more than
a million people every year, most of them children.
Smallpox
Bubonic
plague (with pictures)
Measles
Main medicine page
Main science page
Tell a friend about this page
Did Kidipede answer your question?
Yes, thanks! / No, can you help me?
