Timeline of Malaria

The symptoms of malaria have been recognised as far back as in

chinese mythology

(340CE), The anti fever properties of the Chinese qinghao plant were
first described

(2000 Y, Ago) The ancient greeks recognised it occuring in those that

lived near low, moist and hot districts near swamps. It was named
Malaria, meaning "bad air"

It was supposed that malaria might be caused by drinking swamp

water, or from the bites of swamp insects

The greeks and romans build drains to remove stagnant water, and
the incidence of the fever fell.

(1650) The first drug used to treat malaria was quinine.

(1880), Charles Louis Alphonse Laveran discovered the pathogen that

causes malaria while looking the blood of those who had contracted it.

(1885), Camillo Golgi, established that there were two or more forms of
the disease, one that causes a fever on alternate days, an another that
causes a fever every third day. It was also discovered that this
coincided with different production of new parasites and that the peak
of the gever coincided with the release of the merozites into the blood.

(1890), Giovanni Grassi and Raimondo Filetti named the two malaria
parasites discovered.

(1897), The name of the original parasite was changed to P. falciparum

(1898), Giovanni Grassi and Giuseppe Bastianelli showed that human

malaria is transmitted the sam way as malaria in birds.

(1898), The mosquito is shown to be responsible for the transmission

of malaria

Procedures are enacted to cull the vector, by draining stagnant

water, sprayed with oil and protective clothing was used.

(1901), Pyrethrum is used as an insectocide to kill mosquitos

(1922), A fourth human malaria parasite was discovered.

(1930), Anti malarial drug Atebrin was developed

(1944), Synthetic quinine was developed.

(1940+), Cloroquine was developed. Highly effevtive until new malaria

strains evolved resistance.

(1950), World Health Org. attempts to completely eradicate malaria.

This involves the use of the insectocide DDT to try to wipe out moquito
populations. It uses the intro duction of biological controls such as fish
that eat insect larvae.

(1970) The use of drugs such as prophylactics helps to prevent

contraction of the disease.

THe WHO program was initially very successful and numbers of

cases of malaria had dropped dramatically by the early 1970's.

(1971), Artemisisin was isolated from the qinhao plant.

(1970+), many idfferent anti malarial drugs have been used, but each
becomes ineffective as the parasite evolves into a resistant form. The
use of DDT was discontinued when mosquitos were found to be
resistant to it.

(1980), Resurgence of malaria

(1981), Search for malaria vaccine

(2000+), because of widespread development of drug resistant malaria

parasites, combination drug therapy that includes the highly effective
artemisinin is the only consistantly effective treatment.