What is malaria disease?
Malaria is a dangerous disease. The disease occurs only in tropical and subtropical regions. The cause of malaria is the malaria parasite. You can get this parasite by a mosquito sting. The mosquitoes carry the parasite. These mosquitoes are especially in the countryside and less in cities.
What are the signs and symptoms of malaria?
At a sting from an infected mosquito the parasites in your blood. You notice there in the beginning.
Ten to fourteen days after infection with the parasite gets you suffer from the symptoms. Are you using malaria drugs? You can still get sick. The first symptoms usually come only after months or even years.
The symptoms are fever, chills, nausea, headache, heavy sweating, diarrhea and vomiting.
Do you have one or more of these symptoms during or after a trip to the (sub) tropics? Then go to your family doctor. The doctor examines whether the parasite in your blood. If you have, you will get malaria medicines.
How do you get malaria?
You can get malaria from mosquitoes. If this mosquito bites a malaria patient, she sucks blood with malaria parasites. In the mosquito multiply the parasites themselves. When the infected mosquito bites you, the parasite in your blood. The parasites via the blood stream to come in the liver. There they continue to multiply. You will not notice it. Get parasites from the liver into the blood, where they invade red blood cells. Here they form many new parasites, causing the red blood cells burst. The released parasites infect other red blood cells again. Now a mosquito you put your blood again infect others.
Form of malaria
There are different forms of malaria tertian malaria, quartan or tropica.
Malaria tertian or quartan you get bouts of fever and chills. When you get malaria tertiana these attacks every two days. Malaria quartana every three days. You may feel very sick during the cold periods. Yet these forms of malaria are usually benign. However, the disease after healing can come back a few times.
Falciparum malaria can be fatal. In the beginning, do you have a fever, with or without chills. Furthermore, you may suffer from headaches, muscle aches, nausea, vomiting and diarrhea. Your spleen enlarges and you get anemia. After a few days, organs such as the kidneys, liver and spleen, to work less well. This allows you suffer from jaundice, confusion and fluid in the lungs. You can fall into a coma or in shock. Without treatment, the disease is usually fatal.
How to prevent malaria?
You can reduce the risk of malaria by taking anti-malarial drugs. You have a prescription from your general practitioner or the Municipal Health Service doctor. Despite the medications you can still get malaria. That is because some variants of the parasite do not respond well to medication (resistance). Furthermore, you should try to avoid being stung by mosquitoes. You do this by:
- check your room for mosquitoes;
- sleeping under a mosquito net (mosquito net).
- wear long pants, long sleeves, socks and closed shoes;
- lubricate your skin with DEET. This is in some insect repellent and mosquito markers. Mosquitoes do not like the smell of DEET. For children and pregnant women, however, DEET can be dangerous. Ask your pharmacist or doctor for advice.