Malaria
Malaria is a disease caused by a parasite that lives both in mosquitoes and humans . Malaria lives in tropical and sub-tropical areas such as Southeast Asia, the Middle East, Haiti, India, The Dominican Republic, Africa, Papua New Guinea, and Central and South America. Malaria is one of the largest diseases around the world. About one out of every 20 people on earth, almost 300 million people, suffer from malaria yearly. Almost 2 million of those 300 million people die each year. Many new drugs are being tested to prevent malaria but no sure vaccine has been discovered.
Malaria has terrorized this earth since the mid-Pleistocene age. No one knows just when malaria showed up in the Western Hemisphere however. Many say that malaria roamed the New World before the Europeans came over. Yet others will say that the Western Hemisphere had no contact with malaria until the end of the fifteenth century. Many other diseases similar in destruction as malaria were brought over from the old world from Europe and Africa. Malaria limited colonization all over the world. West Africa and Northern Australia were major hot spot for malaria attacks during the colonization of those areas. Malaria also resulted in many casualties in wars form Ancient Greece to Vietnam and present. The Old World supposedly gave malaria to the New World. However, the New World found the first effective treatment for the disease.
In 1632, a piece of bark form a Peruvian Tree was taken to Europe by a Spanish priest. The bark was soon found to be a remedy to the constant fevers. Malaria was extremely active in Ancient Rome and Europe. However, it is proven that the malaria back then was much less destructive than it has been in recent centuries. This is because P. falciparum, the most deadly type of malaria, was not present back in Ancient Europe. After the fall of the Roman Empire, the History of malaria is unknown for quite some time in Ancient Europe. It was not until the seventeenth and eighteenth...
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