Malaria control and intervention by DDt - Essay Example

Mortality and morbidity rate in Nigeria are very high compared to any country in Africa. Unless the root causes are not determined and effective measures to eradicate the disease are not implemented, any hope for decline in the disease statistics by just preventive measures is useless. DDT can prove to be an effective means to destroy the breeding sites of mosquitoes carrying the parasite and so its risk benefit ratio against the control of Malaria, should be reviewed by the governing bodies for effective eradication of the disease condition from Nigeria.

NIGERIA: DEMOGRAPHIC AND GEOGRAPHIC INFORMATION The most populous country in Africa is Nigeria. It covers the area of about 923,768 square kilometers. It is located on the Gulf of Guinea in West Africa. Benin, Chad, Niger and Cameroon are its neighboring countries. The southern coast is bordered with swamps and mangroves forests and the River Niger flows South through the Western regions of the country. Its capital is Abuja and the three most ethnic and influential groups of Nigeria are Hausa, Igbo and Yoruba.

An estimation of Nigerian population was made by the United Nations; it was 124,009,000, which made it the tenth most populated country of the world in the year 2000. The birth rate skyrocketed with 40.12% per 1000 and the death rate was 13.72 per 1000 for the same year. The annual growth rate of the population was 2.67% for the years 2000 till 2015. 44% of the population lives in the urban areas. The Southern regions are thickly populated than the North. The most populated city of Nigeria is Lagos.

Nigeria is made up of 36 states and there are six geopolitical zones in it. (National Encyclopedia) MALARIA: Malaria is a tropical disease which is caused by Anopheles mosquito bite. A female mosquito, Anopheles, infected with plasmodia parasite. The infected person faces fever attacks with influenza symptoms, fatigue and diarrhea and many other indicating symptoms of the infection. Parasites grow in the intestine of the mosquito and are present in the salivary glands for its easy transmission to host.

With a single bite of the mosquito, parasite is injected into the blood stream of the person and invades in liver. Liver and blood acts as host for development and completing the life cycle of malarial sporozoites. Parasites multiply inside red blood cells and expose the symptoms of malaria within 10 days to 4 weeks of infection. It takes over 5 -16 days for sporozoites to grow and divide, and sometimes it takes more than that, so parasite remains dormant for an extended period of time. Malaria parasites are from the genus Plasmodium.

Altogether four types of Plasmodium can cause Malaria, out of which Plasmodium Falciparum causes the most fatal Malaria. Plasmodium Ovale, P. vivax, P. Malariae causes milder Malaria.(Easmon C.,2009) MALARIA IN NIGERIA: Malaria is one of the leading cause of death in Sub Saharan and other third world countries. Developed countries have eradicated the disease by various useful means but still sometimes cases of malaria are reported because the strains of plasmodium carrying Anopheles bacteria are still present in these regions.

In 2007, CDC received