Malaria is one of the oldest diseases that we know of that has affected humankind. Dr. Randall Packard (video) estimates that malaria originated over 100,000 years ago.
"I want the Americans to know that malaria is still with us, is the biggest killer, particularly of children, and is the biggest cause of admissions and outpatient attendances." - Professor David Mwakyusa, Minister of Health and Social Welfare, Tanzania
World Malaria Day "is a day that we remind the people of the world that a disease which is supposed to be both preventable and curable is needlessly killing a lot of people, particularly vulnerable groups: women and children, groups of people with no voice." - Dr. Alex Mwita, Tanzania
History of Malaria
Malaria or a disease like it has been noted for more than 4,000 years. In the early 17th century, following the Spanish arrival in the New World, Spanish Jesuit missionaries learned of a medicinal bark from indigenous tribes in Peru that cured fever. The bark was the antimalarial medication now known as quinine, one of the most effective antimalarial drugs today.
In 1880, Charles Louis Alphonse Laveran, a French army surgeon stationed in Algeria, was the first to notice parasites in the blood of a patient suffering from malaria. He was awarded the Nobel Prize in 1907 for his discovery. Then, in 1906, an Italian neurophysiologist named Camillo Golgi discovered that there were at least two forms of malaria, observing that the forms produced different numbers of merozoites (new parasites) and that fever symptoms coincided with the rupture of blood cells and release of merozoites into the bloodstream. Golgi was also awarded the Nobel Prize in Medicine in 1906.
In 1897, Ronald Ross, a British officer in the Indian Medical Service, solved the malaria transmission question when he demonstrated through his work with bird malaria that the parasite could be transmitted to mosquitoes from infected patients, and from bird to bird through mosquitoes. Subsequently, a team of Italian investigators confirmed that mosquitoes transmitted malaria to human patients, and demonstrated the complete sporogenic cycles of the human malaria parasites, Plasmodium falciparum, P. vivax, and P. malariae.
In 1906 during construction of the Panama Canal, there were 26,000 employees working on the Canal and 21,000 were hospitalized for malaria at some point. By 1912, the Canal had over 50,000 employees and the number of hospitalized workers had decreased to 5,600 due to increased understanding of and better efforts at controlling the disease. In 1914, United States Public Health Services officials requested and received funding from Congress to investigate and combat malaria in the U.S. for the first time in our history. Various activities to address malaria in the United States followed from this initial request. For example, an organized and effective malaria control program stemmed from the 1933 Tennessee Valley Authority act under Roosevelt that led to the disease's virtual elimination by 1947. At the time the TVA was enacted, malaria affected about 30% of the population in the area.
The CDC formed and began combatting malaria in the United States in 1946. The National Malaria Eradication Program, a cooperative undertaking by state and local health agencies of 13 Southern states and the CDC, commenced on July 1, 1947, and malaria was considered eradicated from the United States by 1951. Since then, the CDC has switched its malaria focus from eradication efforts to prevention, surveillance, and technical support both domestically and internationally.
Although malaria is completely preventable and has been eradicated from the United States and virtually all other high-income countries, it is a disease that still devastates the developing world. Malaria causes approximately 250 million illnesses and just under one million deaths worldwide each year. 85% of these deaths are in children under 5, and 89% of all deaths occur in Africa.