Malaria Surveillance: United States, 2010. Morbidity and Mortality Surveillance Summaries, Vol. 61, No. 2.

摘要

Malaria in humans is caused by infection with one or more of several species of Plasmodium (i.e., P. falciparum, P. vivax, P. ovale, P. malariae, and occasionally other Plasmodium species). The infection is transmitted by the bite of an infective female Anopheles mosquito. P. falciparum and P. vivax species cause the most infections worldwide. P. falciparum is the agent that most commonly causes severe and potentially fatal malaria (see Definitions). Worldwide, an estimated 216 million clinical cases and 655,000 deaths were reported in 2010, mostly in children aged <5 years living in sub-Saharan Africa. P. vivax and P. ovale have dormant liver stages, which can reactivate and cause malaria several months or years after the initial infection. P. malariae can result in long-lasting infections and if untreated can persist asymptomatically in the human host for years, even a lifetime. Approximately half of the worlds population live in areas where malaria is transmitted (i.e., approximately 100 countries in parts of Africa, Asia, the Middle East, Eastern Europe, Central and South America, the Caribbean, and Oceania). Before the 1950s, malaria was endemic throughout the southeastern United States; an estimated 600,000 cases occurred in 1914. During the late 1940s, a combination of improved housing and socioeconomic conditions, environmental management, vector-control efforts, and case management was successful at interrupting malaria transmission in the United States.* Since then, malaria case surveillance has been maintained to detect locally acquired cases that could indicate instances of local transmission and to monitor patterns of resistance to antimalarial drugs. Malaria vector mosquitoes are still present in the United States.