In the third unit of the Disease course, which is called World, the class learned about epidemics around the world, and also looked into the dangers that they cause. We also learned about the different vocab words that are used to rate an epidemic, as well as looking at a scale that would help us determine whether or not a disease would be considered an epidemec. For the math portion we looked at finding the R naught of a disease, which means the number of people expected to be hit with this disease. For the action project, the class was assigned to pick a certain disease that was/is endemic and track down the history, symptoms, look into factors that may lead to this disease, and then graph it out. I decided to choose Malaria, because I know how dangerous this disease can be. At first it was difficult graphing everything out, but then once I figured out how to use the website that is used to create the graphs, it went well. I hope you enjoy my video and script below!
Hey everyone! Through this video I will explain the dangers of the very dangerous disease Malaria. First, I want to go off with saying what Malaria is and the symptoms. The word Malaria comes from 18th century Italian meaning of the the word mala, which means “bad” and aria meaning “air”. That term was first used by an Italian doctor, where at the time, they believed disease was caused by foul air in marshy surroundings. Finally in 1880, they discovered that Malaria is a parasitic disease that is caused by the Anopheles mosquito. The disease is shared by a female mosquito, as she needs blood for her eggs. Symptoms include fever, chills, nausea, vomiting, fatigue, headaches, and sweats. The RO of this epidemic is RO>200+700 on occasion, meaning that for every person thats gets hit by this disease 200 or even 700 people can become infected, also meaning that this disease is highly endemic. Study shows that 40% of the world population is at risk of the infection. I decided to look into Africa with this Disease. In the beginning of the 90s, it was estimated that that each year 300-500 million people were ill with malaria, with 1.5 to 2.5 million dieing of this disease. 90% of these deaths were in Africa. It is also said that problems with this disease occurred more in places with changes in climate, not enough financial and human resources, land use, and the population. I have a map that shows the regions that are affected, which add up to be 108 countries all together, along with the number of people affected in those countries. There’s the Americas with 1.1 million, Western Pacific with 2.3 million, Eastern Mediterranean with 12 million, South East Asia with 34 million and Africa with 176 million people infected. In Africa a child dies from Malaria every 30 seconds. Below I have a graph representing the amount of cases reported of Malaria, with people also living in poverty. I’ve noticed that the numbers for the countries in Africa go up way more than the others. Mostly because people who live in poverty can not afford the medication or things offered to prevent malaria. I also looked at how drought has affected the number of people hit with Malaria, since these mosquitoes mostly breed in water. Even though drought causes mosquitoes to get away from those areas, the longer they’re gone, the less some people are prepared for when they do come back, resulting in more people being affected. Drought is even said to be a benefit and a curse. Thanks to insecticide treated bed nets the number of people dieing due to Malaria have gone down, especially younger children, but again not much because most of the people hit with Malaria live in poverty, which means they can not afford them. Another way to prevent this disease is to get medication, but that usually just works for travelers. The downside to this is that since most people who get Malaria live in poverty, they don’t really have access to any treatment, which means the disease is going to stick around them for awhile.
Works cited:
"Give a Net on World Malaria Day, April 25." CDC Foundation. N.p., n.d. Web. 22 Mar. 2015.
"Malaria and Climate Change." Pulitzer Center. N.p., 23 Feb. 2010. Web. 22 Mar. 2015.
"Health Effects of Drought: A Systematic Review of the Evidence – PLOS Currents Disasters." PLOS Currents Disasters. N.p., 5 June 2013. Web. 22 Mar. 2015.
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