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Malaria health advice Malaria is a blood infection carried from one individual to the other by mosquitoes. The infection commences with a bite from an infected mosquito. The parasite that is transmitted through this bite travels to the liver, where it begins to reproduce. During this period, the person feels no change in any bodily function. The symptoms of malaria appear only after the parasite has left the liver and travelled to the bloodstream. Here, it infects red blood cells, which then burst and enable the parasite to spread to other red blood cells, thereby releasing more parasites into the bloodstream. Malaria will also spread if another mosquito bites an infected person, and that mosquito carries the infection to someone else.
Malaria can also spread through blood transfusions or organ transplants, although these are not very commonplace. IV drug users can also catch malaria from sharing needles – again, not a very common cause of malaria. Babies can also be born with malaria if their mothers have it during the time or pregnancy. Even if the disease is in a dormant stage then, and the mother does not know she had malaria, the child can still be born with it.
For most people, the symptoms of malaria do not manifest until at least 10 days after being bitten. The commonest initial symptoms are fever, shaking, chills, fatigue and body ache. It is sometimes easy to mistake these symptoms for flu.
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