Malaria is blood disease caused by a parasite called Plasmodium. This disease occurs widely in poor, subtropical and tropical regions of the world. One subtropical region that has been greatly affected by this disease is Sub-Saharan Africa. According to Olowookere, Adeleke, Kuteyi, and Mbakwe (2013) malaria is one of the leading causes of death and illness in sub-Saharan Africa. It is important to be aware of the impacts this disease carries and how it has greatly affected millions of people. This paper will explain the impacts of Malaria and discuss, compare, and contrast the malaria research conducted by various researchers and reflect on the issue.
Many factors contribute to the high mortality from malaria in sub-Saharan Africa. One factor is the high transmission rates. The weather conditions in Africa greatly contribute to year round transmission. The Plasmodium parasite is transmitted through the bite of a small female insect called a mosquito or Anopheles gambiae. Plasmodium falciparum is one of the four species of the parasite transmitted that can cause severe malaria (Olowookere et al,. 2013). After transmitting this disease, a person may experience chills, fever, vomiting, and headaches. If malaria isn’t properly treated death can occur. This disease is more fatal to people with vulnerable immune systems, like young children or pregnant women.
Another factor of malarias high mortality rate is poverty. This disease afflicts the poor who live in areas where malaria is predominant. Africa is a poverty stricken region that lacks resources because of the economic instability. Because of this, many sub-Saharan countries in Africa are unable to keep up with cost of maintaining health clinics, providing vaccinations, and educating the people about the preventive measures that can be taken.
One aspect of this health issue that researchers in the peer reviewed articles focused on was prevention of malaria. For the most part, all of the researchers findings agreed with each other, but some researchers found that certain measures would be more effective than others. Fullman, Burstein, Lim, Medlin and Gakidou (2013) examined the impacts of using bed nets, spray, or even both to prevent transmission. They found that people living in low and medium transmission areas had both insecticide treated bed nets and used indoor residual sprays. They also found that the risk of malaria was reduced by 53% with the use of both these interventions (Fullman et al., 2013) However, Olowookere et al. (2013) disagreed, suggesting that the use of insecticide treated nets and preventive education would decrease the spread of this disease. Eisele, Larsen, Walker, Cibulski, Yukich, Zikusooka, and Steketee (2012) agreed with both researchers on the use of bed nets, stating that over a 10 year scale-up of malaria prevention roughly “842,800 potential child deaths were prevented” (p. 96) and “roughly 831,100 of those 842,800 deaths were prevented through the...
