The good news today is scientists are trying to block malarial transmission by 'going after' the parasite, and not the mosquito, which has been a 'disappointing' norm
You'd think of it as the most implausible miniature aircraft of all - with the unbearable 'drum beats' in your ear. You got the whole idea right - a hazard you'd not even 'touch' from afar, as it were.
Now, the basics. With her brittle body, and spiky arsenal of wings, legs and antennae poking out in every possible direction, the perilous mosquito is making a travesty of our scientific and technological progress. The dangerous insect, with her aggro image, is, indeed, the 'femme fatale,' in more ways than one. She enacts a biting tale of diabolical importance, with more than an element of computerised regularity. Her message is simple - sucking blood to proliferate her race.
As she scans her sphere for a possible target, her wings beat from 250 to 500 times a second. Rainfall, heat, or dust, cannot affect her movements; in fact, nothing can, except the latest repellent, or the more advanced spray, up until she overcomes its remedial strength with her indigenous dexterity and sublime craft. Not only that. The female mosquito can switch off her incredible wing muscles in her midsection, while enabling them to relax and contract just as quickly. Interestingly, her sense of sudden attack, or blitzkrieg, is variable. If some of the 2,800 mosquito species, we now know of, bite only during daytime, others revel in their activity at dusk - especially when it is quietly dark.
That she cannot see in the dark is no problem - the night-biting mosquito uses her sensors, two antennae and three pairs of legs - to find for herself a grand snack. She catches the scent of your exhaled carbon dioxide and gets closer to determine whether you are 'sport' to her gastronomic instincts. Smart, and practical that she is, a mosquito is often in the family way - having mated already - much before she has 'pinched' her first blood nibble.
The mosquito has a volatile existence. One mosquito bite, for example, can inject up to 600 malaria sporozoites, or the motile infective form of the malarial parasite, what with each of them yielding up to 30,000 'daughters.' While the males of all species - and, females of several species - survive primarily on the nectar of flowers and also play an important role in pollination, some prefer the bloodstream of elephants and mice too - not just human beings. A species, in Africa, for instance, preys only on ants, drawing from its mouth honey, not blood. Another species bites turtles through their shell - that is through the animal's solid armour.
Mosquitoes, tiny as they are, have destroyed civilisations. Science testifies that they may have contributed to the decline of ancient Greece and Rome. Even today, the devastation of mosquito-borne diseases continues - primarily in the form of malaria, yellow and dengue fevers, and filariasis, also called elephantiasis. In the times we now live in, the mosquito has rocked several regions of Asia, Africa, and South America. Its treacherous effects, aside from that "small, high, hateful bugle" in your ear, as author D H Lawrence put it in purple prose, have returned to rattle the US too, and to settling scores.
Malaria (mal'aria = bad air) has been a relentless peril since historic times. In ancient Egypt, malaria occurred primarily in lowland areas. The testimony: enlarged spleen, which is the illness's 'refuge,' of some Egyptian mummies. The illness has also claimed several illustrious victims, down the ages. To name a few: Alexander the Great, in June 323 BC; Pope Innocent III, in 1216; Dante Alighieri, in 1321; and, Raphael Sanzio, in 1520.
Malaria is a complicated and deadly infection - in factual terms, it is actually four illnesses, caused by four related parasites, each having distinctive characteristics: Plasmodium falciparum, P vivax, P ovale, and P malariae. The bite of a female mosquito of the genus anopheles transmits the infection to humans during the process. The illness is obviously a huge target of intense international efforts employing some of the most advanced techniques available at the frontiers of modern science and medicine in an attempt to discover new weapons to fighting an old, dangerous enemy. All the same, the illness continues to claim over a million lives in the tropics alone - on an annual basis.
Malarial patterns, in the Indian subcontinent, are manifold. Though governments spend a sizeable chunk of their healthcare budgets on malaria control, there has been no let-up in outbreaks of the illness. For several reasons - most notably, the ineffectiveness of DDT and other insecticides, chloroquine's losing battle with its potency, besides poor environmental hygiene.
What's more, modern medicine, notwithstanding its significant progress against the parasite in the 1940s and 1950s, seems to have also run out of ideas due to new resistant strains. No wonder why the illness is now felling victims in over a hundred countries, most of them children. The African countries, where 90 per cent of malarial deaths occur, have been ravaged by hostilities. This makes it all the more difficult to combat the scourge. Worse still, many developed nations, especially the US, that used to earlier fund most of the malaria research, are limiting, or cutting their budgets.
According to a report published by the Institute of Medicine (IoM), scientists have a long way to go in deciphering malaria's basic biology. It isn't also known, for instance, why some people living in malarial areas become violently ill, while others develop immunity. True, the IoM study had to go through a difficult path - of competing camps, researchers, clinicians, and mosquito-control specialists. In the end, the panel did not single out any particular strategy for attention, but instead proposed one, which embraced them all. The malarial mosquito is a wily customer. The good news today is scientists are trying to block its transmission by 'going after' the parasite, and not the mosquito, which has been a 'disappointing' norm.
Nidamboor is a wellness physician, independent researcher and author
