Health professionals have called for taking malaria prevention and control measures to reduce malaria burden in the country. "Non-immune travellers from malaria-free areas are very vulnerable to disease when they get infected," they said. According to them, malaria is a life threatening disease caused by parasites that are transmitted to a body through the bites of infected mosquitoes, particularly in present high-risk season. Parasites spread to people through the bites of infected anopheles mosquitoes, called malaria vectors, which attack mainly between dusk and dawn.
The health professionals said that parents and caretakers of children needed to realise that it was their moral, ethical and religious obligation to ensure that their children were protected against diseases and disabilities through completion of immunisation course.
They said that malaria was an acute febrile illness. "In a non-immune individual, symptoms appear seven days or usually 10 to 15 days after the infected mosquito bites a person. The first symptoms like fever, headache, chills and vomiting may be mild and difficult to recognise as malaria. If not treated within 24 hours, malaria can progress to severe illness often leading to death," they added.
They said children with severe malaria frequently develop one or more of the symptoms like severe anaemia, respiratory distress in relation to metabolic acidosis, or cerebral malaria. In adults, multi organ involvement is also frequent while in malaria endemic areas, persons may develop partial immunity, allowing asymptomatic infections to occur, they said.
They further commented that malaria in Pakistan is typically unstable and major transmission period is post monsoon - from August to November. "Major vector species are Anopheles culicifacies and a stephensi, both are susceptible to the insecticides currently being used. The widely distributed causative organisms are Plasmodium falciparum and Plasmodium vivax. The malariogenic potential of Pakistan has a negative impact on its socio-economic growth and productivity, as the main transmission season is spiraled with the harvesting and sowing of the main crops (wheat, rice, sugar cane)," they said.