Days of Malaria

Reviews in History, 2016

The Making of a Tropical Disease: A Short History of Malaria, published in 2007, was a timely overview of the history of one of the most complex and ancient of all diseases. Indeed, Packard's subtitle: 'a short history of malaria' is a modest one considering the depth and breadth of the range of topics relating to the history of malaria that Packard covers. But at just under 300 pages in length, in a highly accessible and well-organised format, this book has been widely read by scholars from a broad range of disciplines. In addition, chapters selected for their scientific or historical material have appeared on many seminar and course lists for undergraduate and graduate students. Charles Rosenberg's introduction to Packard's book, one of a series of 'Biographies of Disease' published by Johns Hopkins University Press, highlights the significance of the importance of the kind of narrative Packard has written to guide his reader through the historical past. Rosenberg's own research on health and disease and his legacy through the work of his students has echoes in the Packard book. While the series-a biography of disease-places the focus on the disease, Packard, true to his historical roots in the political economy of disease, treatment and prevention has written much more than a biography of malaria. Paying due respect to the sciences of entomology, parasitology and, in passing, immunology, Packard reminds us that malaria is about people and that people live in multiple contexts. We need to understand these contexts of people's lives, at the political, social and economic levels, to appreciate the complexity of living and dying with this 'burden of disease'.

Development, 2020

Malaria is the oldest disease of humankind. It is known to have killed more people than all other diseases and wars on Earth combined together and it is probably the one single disease with the most dollars in its belly, when it comes to research and development funding. Still, malaria parasites are killing almost 500,000 people, mostly children, each and every year in sub-Saharan Africa.

The study examines the pathological circumstances related to Byron’s death, the primary issue being malaria. Lord Byron died during the Greek War of Independence against the Ottoman Empire, in Messolonghion 19 April 1824. Byron’s medical profile consists of recurrent onsets of fever, which gave rise to the suspicion of malaria relapses. According to Byron’s letters he reported crises of fever in Greece (1810), Malta (1811), Italy (1817-1819) and England. Evidence from Byron’s autopsy, specifically the absence of hepatosplenomegaly, does not support a hypothetical diagnosis of malaria. Nonetheless, the relapsing fevers cannot be ignored and the same applies to the possibility of malaria relapse or re-infection in line with the endemic nature of the Messolonghi area. Our research on the chronologies of Byron’s reported fevers found that new attacks occurred at intervals of 540 days on average. Moreover, the most outstanding feature of Plasmodium vivax and Plasmodium ovale is their ability to form dormant forms of hypnozoites in the liver which, when reactivated (110-777 days), cause true relapses of clinical disease. Of course, an ex post facto diagnosis is under debate, because the malaria diagnosis is not clinical but microscopic. Byron’s example raises alarm over a current medical problem, i.e. the diagnosis of unexplained fevers, and the need for a detailed travel or immigration history, which will include malaria in the differential diagnosis.

Malaria has both socioeconomic and geo-ecological impact. The evidence of malaria incidences were documented about 2500 years before the birth of Christ and after that investigations are going onto fight against this evil fever. According to World Health Organization (WHO) more than 200 million populations are exposed to health risk by malaria parasite and hence imposed a burden to our society. This paper is a review of the journey of malaria researches over the globe which now becomes a subject of concern both for control and awareness of the disease.

South Asian History and Culture, 4.1, pp. 65-86., 2013

Among the public health community, 'all except malaria' is often shorthand for neglected tropical diseases. The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation's cause ce´le`bre, malaria receives a tremendous amount of funding, as well as scientific and policy attention. Malaria has, however, divergent biological, behavioural and socio-political guises; it is multiply implicated in the environments we inhabit and in the ways in which we inhabit them. The malaria that focuses our attention crops up in the back alleys of Dar es Salaam, brought into being by local labour and municipal governance -a version of malaria that, we argue, is increasingly excluded in current eradication campaigns. This article considers the cycles of public health amnesia, memory and neglect that construe the parasitological exchange between man and mosquito. It begins by exploring the political concerns and technical capacities that have transformed malaria into a global enemy. Combining these historical accounts with ethnographic material, we suggest how malaria is disentangled from or conflated with particular places. Ultimately, our aim is to reflect upon the relationship between scale of malaria control and its social consequence, attending to the actors and relations that fall outside of contemporary global public health policy.

South Asian History and Culture, 2013

The drug quinine figured as an object of enforced consumption in British India between the late 1890s and the 1910s, when the corresponding diagnostic category malaria itself was redefined as a mosquito-borne fever disease. This article details an overlapping milieu in which quinine, mosquitoes and malaria emerged as intrinsic components of shared and symbiotic histories. It combines insights from new imperial histories, constructivism in the histories of medicine and literature about non-humans in science studies to examine the ways in which histories of insects, drugs, disease and empire interacted and shaped one another. Firstly, it locates the production of historical intimacies between quinine, malaria and mosquitoes within the exigencies and apparatuses of imperial rule. In so doing, it explores the intersections between the worlds of colonial governance, medical knowledge, vernacular markets and pharmaceutical business. Secondly, it outlines ways to narrate characteristics and enabling properties of non-humans (such as quinines and mosquitoes) while retaining a constructivist critique of scientism and empire. Thirdly, it shows how empire itself was reshaped and reinforced while occasioning the proliferation of categories and entities like malaria, quinine and mosquitoes.

Malaria is an ancient disease prevalent in many parts of the world. It is transmitted through the bite of female Anopheles mosquitoes. Malarial outburst is a public health problem with significant morbidity and mortality in endemic areas. Despite its ancient origin, historical importance and global presence, we are unable to curb the spread of disease. Management of malaria requires an interdisciplinary holistic approach interlinking the life cycle of the plasmodium, mosquito and other possible host. These intricate complexities of malaria and mosquitoes will yield the vital clue to understand the role of vectors to have an insight into its biological niche and come up with an effective control plan.