Tuesday to Thursday this week, Malaria No More’s Martin Edlund will be live blogging from the Gates Foundation’s Malaria Forum in Seattle. Below he provides some background.

Malaria: the Basics

Through a determined military-style effort, the United States managed to eliminate malaria domestically in 1951. Most Americans haven’t thought a lot about it since. As we head into this week’s Gates Malaria Forum, it’s worth reviewing what a massive health crisis malaria remains in the rest of the world.

Malaria kills more children in Africa than AIDS, TB, cancer, or any other disease: 3,000 kids a day, and more than 1 million people a year.

That’s only the tip of the iceberg. There are an estimated 350 million to 500 million malaria cases a year globally. People in malaria-endemic areas often suffer multiple bouts a year, laying them up for weeks at a time (or worse). One area in northern Zambia recorded 1,353 cases of malaria for every 1,000 children in 2005—more than one case per child.

Public health discussions often refer to something called the Basic Reproductive Number, or BRN. It’s the number of people that will become infected with a disease, on average, from a single infected host.

HIV/AIDS has a BRN of one, meaning that one new person gets infected for every one person that has the disease. Measles has a BRN of 12 to 14. Malaria’s BRN is a staggering 100!

The culprit in Africa is an especially effective vector called the Anopheles mosquito, which has a taste for human blood. At the height of the rainy seasons, they descend on the landscape like a haze; there are an estimated 100 billion Anopheles mosquitoes in Africa alone.

Anopheles is nocturnal, so it feeds on humans while they sleep, depositing a few microscopic malaria parasites into the bloodstream as it finishes its blood meal. That’s why bed nets are such an effective first-line of defense: they keep the mosquitoes at bay (and if the nets are insecticide-treated, kills the mosquitoes on contact).

I got a sense for just how pervasive malaria can be on a recent trip to Lusaka, Zambia, with American Idol finalist Melinda Doolittle. We had come to distribute insecticide-treated nets provided by donations from American Idol fans.

One afternoon, we visited a local church where a group of kids had gathered to hear Melinda sing. Following the performance, Melinda asked them, “how many of you know what malaria is?”

All 30 kids raised their hands.

“And have any of you actually had malaria?” more than 20 hands remained in the air.

We spent the next few minutes listening to these precious little kids in church clothes talking about their fevers and racking pains, the vomiting and delirium that are the unmistakable hallmarks of the disease.

Malaria is most often fatal in people with little or no acquired immunity and weakened immune systems: children under 5, pregnant women, and people suffering from HIV and TB.

“Wow, that was really disturbing,” I remarked to Melinda as we left the church.

“And to think they’re the lucky ones,” she said. “They survived to talk about it.”

-Martin Edlund, Malaria No More

Malaria No More’s mission is simple: no more deaths from malaria. Learn more and help prevent a million child deaths this year by donating a $10 bed net at www.MalariaNoMore.org.