Berlin – The corona pandemic has sharpened our awareness that everything is connected worldwide. This also applies to the indirect consequences of the pandemic. In the Corona crisis, for example, important malaria programs were interrupted as a result of the lockdown, mosquito nets were no longer distributed in many places and no more medicines were distributed. In 2020 alone, 241 million people worldwide contracted malaria, 627,000 died – 69,000 more than in the previous year, as the World Health Organization (WHO) announced at the end of 2021. World Malaria Day on April 25 aims to draw attention to this problem.
Endemic mainly in the tropics and subtropics
Malaria occurs primarily in the tropics and subtropics. About 1.1 billion people live in malaria risk areas worldwide. 94 percent of cases occur in Africa, mainly in Nigeria, Congo, Uganda, Mozambique and Niger. Children are particularly at risk. In sub-Saharan Africa, 80 percent of deaths are in children under the age of five, according to the WHO. In South Asia, malaria has been pushed back in the last 20 years, especially in India.
Unlike the flu or corona, there is no threat of a pandemic with malaria. Malaria is endemic, meaning it is limited to certain regions. It is not spread from person to person via viruses, but via bites from the female Anopheles mosquito. These transmit unicellular parasites, so-called plasmodia. the kind Plasmodium falciparum is the trigger of the dangerous Malaria tropica.
Napoleon probably also lost many soldiers in Germany to malaria
In this country, too, there were once dangerous malaria plasmodia. At the beginning of the 19th century, Napoleon is said to have lost more soldiers to malaria in the Upper Rhine region than to enemy bullets. Severe outbreaks occurred in flood plains and marshes. But the conditions have changed. Also According to researchers, the pathogen at the time should adapt and weakened.
The Anopheles mosquitoes living in Germany today no longer transmit malaria. The approximately 1,000 registered malaria cases per year are mostly brought back from Africa. However, global warming could according to researchers result in insects reproducing better and pathogens developing better. One day, for example, malaria could once again become endemic in Europe.
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