Biology Reference
In-Depth Information
Some of those moving persons have vivax parasites either in their blood or
liver, thus they are able to infect suitable vector mosquitoes. Even isolated
island nations have to cooperate with their neighbours in order to minimize
reintroduction of malaria into eliminated areas. One such example is the island
of Mauritius where vivax malaria was re-established following a typhoon that
devastated the island in 1975 (
Bruce-Chwatt and Bruce-Chwatt, 1974
). It is
likely that some of the reconstruction staff arriving after the typhoon brought
malaria parasites from the Indian subcontinent triggering an epidemic in
1980 and necessitating a long, expensive program of elimination (
Tatarsky
et al., 2011
). Given our dynamic world situation, it is best to consider malaria
reintroduction issues early and plan for them even before malaria elimination
is achieved within any particularly geographic area.
6.1. Trans-national Malaria Control
International borders challenge all malaria control programs as countries
rarely operate identical public health programs, thus allowing malaria to
defuse across borders into areas that have largely eliminated malaria. Vivax
malaria is especially adept at movement across borders because of asymp-
tomatic carriage of hypnozoites. The GMEP allowed nearby countries to
substantially decrease their malaria transmission rates simultaneously, as in
Southern Europe in the 1950s, thus border control for malaria purposes was
not a major problem. This is unlikely to be true today. Population move-
ments have recently caused malaria reintroductions in France, Greece and
Spain although these autochthonous cases are unlikely to endanger their
malaria elimination status (
Danis et al., 2011
;
Toty et al., 2010
;
Armengaud
et al., 2008
;
Santa-Olalla Peralta et al., 2010
). Several trans-national coop-
erative projects to deal with cross border malaria issues have been set up
including the Asia Pacific Malaria Elimination Network (APMEN) and the
Elimination Eight (E8) Regional Initiative in eight countries of Southern
Africa (
Hsiang et al., 2010
;
Moss et al., 2011
).
6.2. USA Post-Second World War and Korean Conflict
By the beginning of the twentieth century, the USA's malaria problem was
predominantly due to vivax malaria and largely limited to rural southern
areas, particularly river valleys and coastal areas (
Goodwin, 1950
;
Andrews
et al., 1950
). Given the very limited state of public health infrastructure
at the time, malaria endemicity was progressively measured by what was
thought to be the insensitive but specific means of counting death cer-
tificates listing cause of death as malaria. Unfortunately, this method was
