{"id":4012,"date":"2023-07-05T12:26:10","date_gmt":"2023-07-05T17:26:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/?p=4012"},"modified":"2023-07-05T12:26:14","modified_gmt":"2023-07-05T17:26:14","slug":"what-could-cause-a-malaria-comeback-in-the-us-and-what-could-stop-it","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/2023\/07\/05\/what-could-cause-a-malaria-comeback-in-the-us-and-what-could-stop-it\/","title":{"rendered":"What could cause a malaria comeback in the US \u2014 and what could stop it"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Vox<\/a> Americans shouldn\u2019t take a malaria-free future for granted. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Over the last month, five people in the US (four in Florida and one in Texas) have acquired malaria<\/a> within the country\u2019s borders. That\u2019s pretty uncommon \u2014 at least, in this century; until the 1950s, malaria was a persistent plague in the US, especially in the Southeast.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Many of the conditions that favor malaria\u2019s spread haven\u2019t changed much since then. The Anopheles mosquitoes that spread malaria still thrive in many parts of the country, and states that receive high numbers of travelers from countries where malaria is endemic still have warm, wet weather that favors mosquito reproduction.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Nevertheless, it\u2019s extraordinarily rare for American mosquitoes to be infected with malaria. Since the turn of the last century, there have been only about a dozen cases<\/a> of local malaria transmission in the US. But the disease remains a major force of destruction<\/a> elsewhere in the world: In 85 countries across Africa and parts of Asia and South America, malaria caused 240 million illnesses and 627,000 deaths in 2020 alone.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The last spate of local malaria transmission in the US took place 20 years ago. Now circumstances are different: These cases are happening amid rising rates<\/a> of other insect-borne infections nationwide, and smack in the middle of a heat and wildfire wave that together make climate change<\/a>\u2019s health risks undeniable. It\u2019s reasonable to wonder whether the US is at risk for becoming a malaria hot spot again.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cSomething would have to go seriously wrong for malaria to become endemic in the United States,\u201d said Colin Carlson, a global change biologist at Georgetown University\u2019s Center for Global Health Science and Security who has led research<\/a> on the rapidly expanding reach of malaria-spreading mosquitoes in Africa.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It\u2019s perhaps the understatement of the year to say the nation is not immune to \u201cthings going seriously wrong.\u201d Recent history, ahem, has shown that the country\u2019s\u00a0public health<\/a>\u00a0infrastructure, which Americans rely on to catch and contain invasive infectious diseases, is far more fragile than many realized. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

But how vulnerable is the nation, really, to a malaria comeback?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Here\u2019s what the US has going for it \u2014 and against it \u2014 when it comes to future malaria risk.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The US has some things in its favor in the fight against a malaria resurgence<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

One key factor the US has going for it is that it\u2019s already eliminated malaria<\/a>. \u201cOur centralized focus\u201d on getting rid of both malaria parasites and their mosquito hosts\u2019 breeding grounds \u201creally kicked it in the butt,\u201d said Kyndall Dye-Baumuller, a post-doctoral student in vector-borne disease epidemiology at the University of South Carolina\u2019s public health school.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Containing a handful of malaria cases \u2014 and eliminating a handful of malaria-infected mosquitoes \u2014 is much easier than battling back an infection that\u2019s already entrenched.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That\u2019s also made easier by the fact that\u00a0most<\/a>\u00a0malaria only causes disease in humans and not in any other animal, said Dye-Baumuller. She compared the infection with West Nile virus, another infection spread by mosquitoes that leads to illness in humans and in a variety of wild birds. Because it\u2019s so hard to contain this virus in the bird population, there\u2019s a persistent reservoir of West Nile virus in many parts of the US \u2014 and the persistent risk of some crossover to humans. That\u2019s not a risk with malaria.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Continue reading<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div><\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Vox Americans shouldn\u2019t take a malaria-free future for granted. Over the last month, five people in the US (four in Florida and one in Texas) have acquired malaria within the country\u2019s borders. That\u2019s pretty uncommon \u2014 at least, in this century; until the 1950s, malaria was a persistent plague in the US, especially in the Southeast. Many […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":11,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[21,38],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4012","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-featured","category-malaria"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4012","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/11"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4012"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4012\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4013,"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4012\/revisions\/4013"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4012"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4012"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4012"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}