Malaria is well known as an infectious disease that started from a mosquito bite. The female Anopheles mosquitoes those infected by blood that contains the parasite plasmodium. These mosquitoes will infect the humans they bite next. There are four species of plasmodium those will cause malaria and those are the Plasmodium falciparum, Plasmodium malariae, Plasmodium ovale and also Plasmodium vivax. Malaria known to be the endemic around tropics and subtropics areas and it caused millions of death in a year. This is a serious disease that will need the proper treatment and not to be underestimated by anyone.

A tourist that is visiting the tropics and subtropics areas might feel fear because they do not want to deal with any unnecessary disease including the malaria that can lead into a death. But some tourists or the natives are careless enough to travel down the tropical isle without having the proper preparation or prevention. It is possible to prevent malaria from happening and it can be started with using the special lotions or spray to prevent any kinds of mosquitoes from biting. These lotions and spray is actually important thing to be used but some people ignore it because they think of it as troublesome or they don’t like its smells like.

But what should be done when female Anopheles mosquito has already bitten someone? Bitten by a mosquito will make someone feels itchy around bitten area but no one knows for sure whether the mosquito is female Anopheles or not. The only way left now is to recognize the symptoms of malaria so that the disease can be quickly treated before it gets worse. Determining malaria disease will not become an easy thing because incubation time can take a long time and symptoms quite similar with influenza. Incubation time or the time from being bitten by the mosquito until the symptoms appear can take up to one year.

The symptoms of malaria that will appear are including:

1.  Cold that can last up to two hours

2.  Body temperature increase above 38 ºC

3.  Headache and aches of muscles and joints

4.  High blood temperature

5.  Sweating

These symptoms of malaria will continue and repeating for 48 hours to 78 hours depending on types of malaria. Aside of those symptoms, in some rarer cases, the patients of malaria will also reach seizures. In this case, the patients will have the heavy sweating as well as the decrease of body temperature.

Symptoms of malaria are not only stopping there. In the next step in the severe cases of malaria, there will be anemia, jaundice and also the enlarged liver and spleen. There is also the belief that malaria in children might cause the severe damage in brain. But this will still need the proper study because the relation between malaria in children and brain damage is not fully understood yet. The current assumption said that the brain damage is caused by the increase of the intracranial pressure. This fact of malaria makes parents will feel worry when malaria infected their children.

The symptoms of malaria those appear and repeating for 48 hours are signs of Three-day Malaria or the signs of Tropical Malaria and when symptoms appear and repeating for 78 hours, it will be the sign of Four-day Malaria. Knowing the symptom will be helpful in order to be free from the disease. Malaria can lead into death in some cases. And these cases mostly caused by Plasmodium falciparum. Acute Malaria and Cerebral Malaria are two types of malaria those can lead into coma and even death. Young children and also pregnant women are known to be more vulnerable to these types of malaria.

Cerebral Malaria may cause the impairment cognition as well as the neurological damage. It is also known to be related to graying retina which gives another sign of malaria disease. Aside of that, Cerebral Malaria also signed with confusion and delirium, drowsiness, high fever and also severe headache. Most of acute malaria cases caused by Plasmodium falciparum and the symptoms will usually appear after six to fourteen days after the mosquito bites. The symptoms of this malaria are including the cerebral ischemia, hemoglobinuria along with renal failure, hepatomegaly, hypoglycemia, severe headache and also splenomegaly.

The patients of malaria will be able to be fully recovered from this infectious disease. However, the disease might recur after several months of years. It is important to keep on monitoring the health of the body so that there will be no more health disturbance that caused by malaria. The incubating process of malaria in someone who infected by it will last for a year or even more. The disease will said to be fully cured when all of the parasites have gone from the body without any traces. Again, monitoring the disease will be recommended.

Malaria is a disease that can be fatal for some people. Therefore it is important to check the appearing symptoms and make sure whether the symptoms are the signs of malaria or not. There is no body wishes to get this horrible disease so it is important to be careful. For the people who live in the areas of malaria endemic, the proper prevention will be recommended. Avoiding to be bitten by mosquitoes will be easy with the helpful tools mentioned early in this article. Or people can also test the disease with the malaria home testing device available in shops.