1million
victims
More than
Malaria, which is an infection caused by a parasite transmitted
to man by mosquitoes, kills more than 1 million people every year.
The disease is one of the most deadly on the planet, and threatens one
third of humanity, essentially populations found in tropical regions.
Malaria is a major obstacle to development, and is a very real challenge
for research.
A disease that is as old as Man
Malaria screening campaigns
in Senegal (top)
and Benin (opposite).
It is probable that our prehistoric ancestors suffered from malaria. The parasites responsible for the disease have also
been found on Egyptian mummies dating back to 3200 BC. In Antiquity, the famous Greek doctor, Hippocrates, was the first
to describe it, associating it with the stagnant water found in marshes.
In ancient times, malaria affected regions of the world from which it has since disappeared. In the Middle Ages, for example, malaria decimated Europe, from
southern Sweden to Spain and Italy, all countries from which the disease has disappeared since the end of the Second World War.
The first research
In the 17 th century, doctors started using an effective treatment against the fevers associated with
malaria. This treatment was obtained from the bark of a tree, the cinchona, and was already known
to
the South American Indians. In 1820, two French pharmacists, Joseph Bienaimé Caventou and
Joseph Pelletier, discovered quinine, the active ingredient from the cinchona. This made it possible
to produce the first anti-malarial drugs.
Alphonse Laveran, winner of the Nobel
Prize for Physiology and Medicine in 1907,
discovered the parasite responsible for
malaria in 1880.
Cinchona.
The malaria parasites and their means of transmission have only been known since the end of the 19 th century. In 1880, Alphone Laveran, a French military doctor
in Algeria, discovered one of the parasites responsible for the disease in samples of patients’ blood. Fifteen years later, Dr Ronald Ross, a doctor for the British army
in India, identified a parasite for malaria in mosquitoes, thus demonstrating the role these insects play as a vector for the disease. Finally, in Italy in 1899,
Giovanni Grassi and his colleagues described for the first time the complete life cycle of the parasite Plasmodium in mosquitoes of the Anopheles species
and in man. This discovery opened up the field for fundamental research.
One third of humanity under threat
One third of the world’s population is exposed to malaria, essentially in tropical and sub-tropical regions. The number of patients,
however, remains poorly evaluated. Scientists are now doing their utmost to better evaluate the extent of the disease
and the risks of infection at the planetary scale, notably thanks to spatial modelling, so as to obtain the most reliable data
available on which to base international strategies to fight the disease.
Presence of malaria in the world.
zone where the risk of malaria is medium to high.
zone where the risk of malaria is low.
zone unaffected, or mostly unaffected, by malaria.