Every year, there are approximately 350 million to 500 million cases of malaria, a deadly vector-borne infectious disease caused by protozoan parasites. It is estimated that malaria kills between one and three million people, the majority of whom are young children in Sub-Saharan Africa.
Far from the poverty-stricken villages of Africa, International School senior Siobhan Brosnan was prompted to take action when she learned about the devastating truths of malaria and the young lives it claims every day. For her Senior Project, Brosnan decided to dedicate her research to uncovering the disease, its causes, and how to prevent and cure it. She has put numerous hours into studying the social and economical impacts of malaria.
“As part of my Senior Project, I am asking the community to join me in my fundraising activities to buy bed nets,” explained Brosnan, who plans to continue to raise awareness about the disease and its impact on families in Africa by holding a Malaria Symposium at her old school, Cherry Crest Elementary in Bellevue.
“Cherry Crest also has been raising awareness about malaria this year and I wanted to make sure that current students know that an alumna is also working on the same issues.”
Brosnan will be hosting the symposium on April 30 at 7 p.m. at Cherry Crest Elementary to collect donations to purchase and send bed nets to families in Africa through the Nothing But Nets organization (www.nothingbutnets.net).
According to the organization, studies show that the use of insecticide-treated bed nets can reduce transmission of malaria as much as 90 percent in areas with high coverage rates.
Typically, people contract malaria by being bitten by an infective female Anopheles mosquito. Only Anopheles mosquitoes can transmit malaria and they must have been infected through a previous bite from an infected person.
When an infected mosquito bites a person, malaria parasites are transferred by the mosquito’s saliva and are injected into the person being bitten. The parasites multiply within red blood cells, causing symptoms of anemia such as light-headedness, shortness of breath, tachycardia, fever, chills, nausea, flu-like illness, coma, and possibly death.
Brosnan sat down with research doctors and scientists to learn more about the disease. She spent time job shadowing a researcher at the Seattle Biomedical Research Center and conducted interviews with people who have malaria.
She created a Website to share her findings and to keep constant updates as she researches the disease and learns of new ways to help prevent the spread of malaria.
Mosquito nets and insect repellents are two useful tools used to prevent the transmission of malaria. Other prevention methods include spraying insecticides inside houses and draining standing water where mosquitoes lay their eggs.
No vaccine is available for malaria that provides a high level of protection. The preventive drugs that are available must be taken continuously to reduce the risk of infection.
Lindsay Larin can be reached at 425.453.4602.
Find out more information by visiting Siobhan Brosnan’s Website at http://www.geocities.com/jialiandsookhian/index.html.
