The perilous coronavirus tempest has robbed ‘the tiny, high-pitched, hateful bugle’ in your ear of its headline status. Malaria kills over a million every year. Well, if it is cascading certain parts of the globe, it simply suggests one thing. That we’ve not learnt from history — most notably, the malevolent insect’s explosive biology. Just one mosquito bite, for instance, injects up to 500 malarial sporozoites, with each yielding over 30,000 awfully dangerous progeny.
A persistent ‘curse,’ malaria occurred in the lowlands of ancient Egypt, the evidence being enlarged spleen of certain mummies. In ancient Greece malaria often appeared as autumnal fever — on an annual keel. It’s 80 years ago that a specific treatment for malaria became available in Europe — when the bark of the cinchona tree – whose medicinal ingredient, cinchona, is the present-day bitter alkaloid quinine – was introduced into Spain from Peru. Yet, the fact remains that unlike other infectious illnesses, malaria prompts the human body to develop immunity against the invading scourge far too slowly.
That malaria has always been the target of intense international efforts is no breaking news. Well, this has been merely a pyrrhic victory for us, because research has a long way to go yet in deciphering malaria’s beguiling nitty-gritty. This is precisely the ‘fuzzy’ thing about th
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