“I don’t understand why I always have to treat Malaria every month,” one handsome man said to me the last time I saw him at the hospital. So I had to lecture him about a few things that puts him in this situation he doesn’t like.
1. Mosquitoes find you through their sense of smell to detect your sweat, their carbon dioxide detector (yes the same one you breathe out) and their eyes. They can smell you from 1 50yards away. So, they actually hunt you down, and you barely see them.
2. Plasmodium spp find some blood types more sweater and easy to grow in than others (A blood type being the preferred delicacy as compared to O). So, even if the mosquito bit you with an A blood type and another guy with O blood type, you’ll fall sick first.
3. There is known resistance to some antimalarias. Thanks to those who never finish their prescribed antimalaria medication and those who “forget” to use it and at the exact time they should, especially the first 2 doses, plasmodium is now more powerful than the regular artemisinin based therapy.
Although, there is always an exception to every rule, and some people will get cured by using the ‘Items’, to others, however it’s merely as good as eating chalk.
So I elucidate this in case this thoughts have crossed your mind recently too and so that you can know that we are in a war zone with mosquitoes in Sub Saharan Africa.
In medical term, we call it… The Malaria Endemic zone.
Cheers to living in Nigeria lll
Source: BBC Earth YouTube video HERE
