Malaria and Related Topics

World map with the intertropical zone highlighted in crimson

Tropics

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The tropics are the regions of Earth surrounding the Equator.

Areas of the world with tropical climates

A graph showing the zonally averaged monthly precipitation. The tropics receive more precipitation than higher latitudes. The precipitation maximum, which follows the solar equator through the year, is under the rising branch of the Hadley circulation; the sub-tropical minima are under the descending branch and cause the desert areas.

Aerial view of Bora Bora, French Polynesia

Tropical sunset over the sea in Kota Kinabalu, Malaysia

Coconut palms in the warm, tropical climate of northern Brazil

Juruá River in Brazil surrounded by dense tropical rainforests. The Brazilian rainforests are home to uncontacted tribes to this day.

The incidence of malaria increases in areas where the rainy season coincides with high temperatures.

Plastic bag with 0.5–0.7 liters containing packed red blood cells in citrate, phosphate, dextrose, and adenine (CPDA) solution

Blood transfusion

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Process of transferring blood products into a person's circulation intravenously.

The patient receives a blood transfusion through the cannula

Canned blood during the blood transfusion process

Illustration depicting intravenous blood transfusion

A bag containing one unit of fresh frozen plasma

Interpretation of antibody panel to detect patient antibodies towards the most relevant human blood group systems.

Richard Lower pioneered the first blood transfusion from animal to human in 1665 at the Royal Society.

James Blundell successfully transfused human blood in 1818.

William Stewart Halsted, M.D. (1852–1922) performed one of the first blood transfusions in the United States.

Dr. Luis Agote (2nd from right) overseeing one of the first safe and effective blood transfusions in 1914

World War II Russian syringe for direct inter-human blood transfusion

Alexander Bogdanov established a scientific institute to research the effects of blood transfusion in Moscow, 1925.

British poster of 1944 encouraging people to donate blood for the war effort

Wounded soldier being given blood plasma in Sicily, 1943

Charles R. Drew oversaw the production of blood plasma for shipping to Britain during WW2.

As the person receives their blood transfusion, the bag slowly gets emptier, leaving behind blood that has clotted before it could be administered.

The World Health Organization (WHO) recommends that all donated blood be tested for transfusion-transmissible infections. These include HIV, hepatitis B, hepatitis C, Treponema pallidum (syphilis) and, where relevant, other infections that pose a risk to the safety of the blood supply, such as Trypanosoma cruzi (Chagas disease) and PlasmodiumPlasmodium species (malaria). According to the WHO, 25 countries are not able to screen all donated blood for one or more of: HIV, hepatitis B, hepatitis C, or syphilis. One of the main reasons for this is because testing kits are not always available. However the prevalence of transfusion-transmitted infections is much higher in low income countries compared to middle and high income countries.

Clindamycin

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Antibiotic medication used for the treatment of a number of bacterial infections, including osteomyelitis or joint infections, pelvic inflammatory disease, strep throat, pneumonia, acute otitis media (middle ear infections), and endocarditis.

In combination with quinine, it can be used to treat malaria.

Convulsion

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Medical condition where the body muscles contract and relax rapidly and repeatedly, resulting in uncontrolled shaking.

In Nigeria, malaria, which can cause sudden, high fevers, is a significant cause of convulsions among children under 5 years of age.

Giuseppe Bastianelli

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Giuseppe Bastianelli (25 October 1862 – 30 March 1959) was an Italian physician and zoologist who worked on malaria and was the personal physician of Pope Benedict XV.

Sub-Saharan Africa

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Sub-Saharan Africa is, geographically, the area of the continent of Africa that lies south of the Sahara.

Red: Arab states in Africa (Arab League and UNESCO).

Simplified climatic map of Africa: sub-Saharan Africa consists of the Sahel and the Horn of Africa in the north (yellow), the tropical savannas (light green) and the tropical rainforests (dark green) of Equatorial Africa, and the arid Kalahari Basin (yellow) and the "Mediterranean" south coast (olive) of Southern Africa. The numbers shown correspond to the dates of all Iron Age artifacts associated with the Bantu expansion.

Ethnographic map of Africa, from Meyers Blitz-Lexikon (1932).

Climate zones of Africa, showing the ecological break between the hot desert climate of North Africa and the Horn of Africa (red), the hot semi-arid climate of the Sahel and areas surrounding deserts (orange) and the tropical climate of Central and Western Africa (blue). Southern Africa has a transition to semi-tropical or temperate climates (green), and more desert or semi-arid regions, centered on Namibia and Botswana.

Fictionalised portrait of Nzinga, queen of the Ndongo and Matamba kingdoms.

The Tongoni Ruins south of Tanga in Tanzania

Great Zimbabwe: Tower in the Great Enclosure.

Fertility rates and life expectancy in sub-Saharan Africa.

Maasai women and children (Nilo-Saharan).

A Boer European African family (Indo-European).

The Athlone Power Station in Cape Town, South Africa.

Energy sources in sub-Saharan Africa. Fossil Fuels and hydroelectric power make up the largest share of sub-Saharan African electricity.

Phenakite from the Jos Plateau, Plateau State, Nigeria.

Agricultural fields in Rwanda's Eastern Province.

The Naute Fruit Farm at the Naute Dam outside of Keetmanshoop, Namibia.

The University of Botswana's Earth Science building in Gaborone, Botswana.

The University of Antananarivo in Antananarivo, Madagascar.

The Komfo Anokye Hospital in Kumasi, Ghana.

Estimated prevalence in % of HIV among young adults (15–49) per country as of 2011.

Ifá divination and its four digit binary code.

Two Bambara Chiwara c. undefined late 19th / early 20th centuries. Female (left) and male Vertical styles.

A plate of fufu accompanied with peanut soup.

This meal, consisting of injera and several kinds of wat (stew), is typical of Ethiopian and Eritrean cuisine.

The Stade Félix Houphouët-Boigny in Abidjan, Ivory Coast.

Geo-political map of Africa divided for ethnomusicological purposes, after Alan P. Merriam, 1959.

Central Africa
Middle Africa (UN subregion)
Central African Federation (defunct)

Eastern Africa (UN subregion)
East African Community
Central African Federation (defunct)
Geographic East Africa, including the UN subregion and East African Community

Southern Africa (UN subregion)
geographic, including above
Southern African Development Community (SADC)

Malaria is an endemic illness in sub-Saharan Africa, where the majority of malaria cases and deaths worldwide occur.

Scanning electron micrograph of Mycobacterium tuberculosis, a species of pathogenic bacteria that cause tuberculosis

Disease

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Particular abnormal condition that negatively affects the structure or function of all or part of an organism, and that is not immediately due to any external injury.

This rash only affects one part of the body, so it is a localized disease.

Regular physical activity, such as riding a bicycle or walking, reduces the risk of lifestyle diseases.

Obesity was a status symbol in Renaissance culture: "The Tuscan General Alessandro del Borro", attributed to Andrea Sacchi, 1645. It is now generally regarded as a disease.

When a disease is caused by a pathogenic organism (e.g., when malaria is caused by Plasmodium), one should not confuse the pathogen (the cause of the disease) with disease itself.

Stowage of a British slave ship, Brookes (1788)

Atlantic slave trade

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The Atlantic slave trade, transatlantic slave trade, or Euro-American slave trade involved the transportation by slave traders of various enslaved African peoples, mainly to the Americas.

Reproduction of a handbill advertising a slave auction in Charleston, South Carolina, in 1769.

Map of Meridian Line set under the Treaty of Tordesillas

The Slave Trade by Auguste François Biard, 1840

Portrait of Ayuba Suleiman Diallo (Job ben Solomon), painted by William Hoare in the 18th century

Wedgwood anti-slavery medallion, produced in 1787 by Josiah Wedgwood

Slave traders in Gorée, Senegal, 18th century.

Major slave trading regions of Africa, 15th–19th centuries

Diagram of a slave ship from the Atlantic slave trade. From an Abstract of Evidence delivered before a select committee of the House of Commons in 1790 and 1791.

Diagram of a large slave ship. Thomas Clarkson: The cries of Africa to the inhabitants of Europe, c. 1822

A Liverpool Slave Ship by William Jackson. Merseyside Maritime Museum

Charles II of Spain. On November 7, 1693, Charles issued a Royal Decree, providing sanctuary in Spanish Florida for fugitive slaves from the British colony of South Carolina.

West Central Africa was the most common source region of Africa, and Portuguese America (Brazil) was the most common destination.

Slaves processing tobacco in 17th-century Virginia

Cowrie shells were used as money in the slave trade

Slaving guns (Birmingham History Galleries). In the second half of the 18th century, Europeans sold 300,000 rifles a year in Africa, maintaining the endemic state of war in which men, who were taken prisoner, were sold to supply the demand for slaves.

This map argues that import prohibitions and high duties on sugar were artificially inflating prices and inhibiting manufacturing in England. 1823

A Linen Market with enslaved Africans. West Indies, circa 1780

West Indian Creole woman, with her black servant, circa 1780

William Wilberforce (1759–1833), politician and philanthropist who was a leader of the movement to abolish the slave trade.

"Am I not a woman and a sister?" antislavery medallion from the late 18th century

Capture of slave ship El Almirante by the British Royal Navy in the 1800s. freed 466 slaves.

House slaves in Brazil c. 1820, by Jean-Baptiste Debret

Punishing slaves at Calabouco, in Rio de Janeiro, c. 1822

Recently bought slaves in Brazil on their way to the farms of the landowners who bought them c. 1830

A 19th-century lithograph showing a sugarcane plantation in Suriname

Except for the Portuguese, European slave traders generally did not participate in the raids because life expectancy for Europeans in sub-Saharan Africa was less than one year during the period of the slave trade (which was prior to the widespread availability of quinine as a treatment for malaria).