Disease's of the World

In today's world there are many dangerous disease's many people know about the disease's can talked about on a daily basis such as HIV, due to the fact that almost every person will either hear from the media or they will be thought about it in school when they are taking sex ed, to help people protect themselves from contracting it. However there are many other disease's in this world and there are four disease's that are very common in developing countries in the tropics, some of which have a higher death rate than others. These four diseases are malaria, filariasis, dengue fever, and the west Nile virus, which will be discussed thoroughly individually and later on being compared to see which disease is the most dangerous disease between all of them.

Malaria has been around as long as human life has been around, or even longer. Scientist believe that malaria was originated in Africa, same place as humans, over 30 million years according to some mosquito fossils that have been found in Africa (Lambert, 2003) In order for the parasite to continue its life cycle it needs to be in a host, which is either a human or a mosquito, due to the fact they have the correct tissue that is needed in order to transmit it others. This means that it can spread from human to human, mosquito to human, or human to mosquito to human, but the mosquito has to be female due to that the males usually do not bite. The parasite that causes malaria is called Plasmodium and there are four different types of it, the most harmful one is Plasmodium falciparum which is the life-threatening one that can cause a person to die.

Malaria is currently the leading cause of disease and death where there are approximately 300 to 500 million new cases each year worldwide, most of these cases however occur in developing countries in Africa and Central and South America. In sub-Saharan Africa, approximately one million people die every year, most of them being young children. In the US however the malaria is much lower, in 2002 there were 1,337 cases of malaria and only 8 deaths. (Centers for disease control and prevention, 2007).

The one thing that is scary about malaria is that in some areas in the world people can actually have the disease, but not show any type of symptoms due to their immunity; this is often the case in developing countries. However a lot of people tend to get some sort of symptoms which usually arise within 9 to 14 days of receiving the disease (Healthwise, 2009). There are some symptoms of malaria, but they can easily be confused with any other bacteria or virus, such as the flu, that a human can obtain, due to the similar symptoms. These symptoms include fever, chills, headache, sweats, fatigue, and nausea and vomiting. There have also been reports that some people may experience a dry cough, muscle and/or back pain, and have an enlarged spleen. However there are also some rare cases where malaria can lead to impaired functions of the brain or spinal cord, cause seizures, and have a loss of consciousness (Centers for disease control and prevention, 2007).

Unfortunately there is currently no vaccine towards malaria, but there are anti-malaria drugs that you can take which can help prevent a person to get infected. However in order for them to be effective they have to be taken at the specific times and instructions that they are given (Directors of Health Promotion and Education, 2004).

When contracting malaria a person should start treatment as soon as possible. The longer a person waits to start it, the higher the risk will be that the person might die from it. If a person starts treatment within 24 hours of getting the first symptoms of malaria they can usually avoid hospitalization. However if the symptoms are severe hospitalization will be required to have treatments by continuous intravenous infusion. There are currently many drugs that will cure malaria, which include chloroquine, sulfadoxine-pyrimethamine, mefloquine, atovaquone-proguanil, quinine, doxycycline, and artemisin derivatives. The medication a doctor will pick depends on many different factors such as the type of malaria the patient will have, where the infection was acquired, clinical status of the patient, any accompanying illness or condition, pregnancy, and drug allergies ((Centers for disease control and prevention, Malaria treatment, 2007) The only way of diagnosing to see if a person has malaria is through blood test.

The economic toll of countries have malaria is unfortunately very high due to the fact it is the highest deadly disease. The costs for both patients and the government are the drug costs and expenses to prevent the disease to expand. It has been shown that countries that have a high number of malaria cases have a 1.3% lower economic growth per year (Centers for disease control and prevention, Malaria Impact 2004).

Unfortunately there still isn't a prevention to eliminate the disease completely. There are many people who are hoping that this will happen, due the fact that there is a lack of funding for the research required. In today's society many people are funding research on HIV/AIDS and Tuberculosis and malaria isn't getting enough funding to do a better research on it.

Malaria is the deadliest disease currently in the world killing about a million people a year. As of right now it is very common in developing countries in Africa and many children die there from that. Not only is it the most common in Africa, but they also lack the funding to be able to treat the patients once they actually get the disease. In other countries such as the United States it is a fairly uncommon disease in 2002 only about 1,300 contracted malaria and many of those people contracted it from outside the United States.

The next disease that will be discussed is filariasis which is also known as Lymphatic filariasis which is to believed to have been around about 4000 years and originated in Egypt; however the first documentation of the disease was not until the 16th century and was written down by Jan Huyghen van Linschoten. It is currently one of the six deadliest diseases and there is still no vaccine to prevent a person to get it. Worldwide there are currently 120 million cases of this disease and about 40 million it is effecting them physically (Directors of Health Promotion and Education, lymphatic, 2000). In the United States however there is a very small amount of people who have it, due to the fact it is known as a tropical disease and the only way of a person to receive it is by traveling to the different destination where the disease is common in.

The disease is contracting through mosquito's that are infected the process once a person has been bitten by a mosquito it will take about 7-21 days until the life cycle of the parasite has been completed