{"id":4123,"date":"2023-07-18T11:13:39","date_gmt":"2023-07-18T16:13:39","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/?p=4123"},"modified":"2023-07-18T11:14:58","modified_gmt":"2023-07-18T16:14:58","slug":"should-we-be-worried-about-a-malaria-outbreak-in-the-united-states","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/2023\/07\/18\/should-we-be-worried-about-a-malaria-outbreak-in-the-united-states\/","title":{"rendered":"Should We Be Worried about a Malaria Outbreak in the United States?"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Boston University<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Malaria has landed in Florida and Texas. BU infectious diseases specialist David Hamer shares his biggest worries when it comes to mosquito-borne diseases\u2014and why malaria might not be the scariest one. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

When the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) started operations in 1946, it had an urgent mission: prevent malaria from spreading across the United States. Back then, the southern United States was a hot spot for malaria, a potentially deadly infection caused by a parasite spread by Anopheles<\/em> mosquitoes. The agency started spraying insecticide, waging an all-out war<\/a> on the insects. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Their efforts worked. By 1951, the disease was declared eliminated<\/a> from all states. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

But this once-endemic disease isn\u2019t completely out of sight in the United States. For the first time since 2003, local transmission of malaria<\/a> has been found in two states<\/a>, with six cases in Florida and one in Texas. Over a thousand cases are also diagnosed each year in people traveling from countries where malaria spreads. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

David Hamer<\/a>, a Boston University School of Public Health professor of global health and a core faculty at the Center for Emerging Infectious Diseases Policy & Research<\/a>, specializes in vector-borne infectious diseases, including malaria. The disease impacts about half<\/a> of the world\u2019s population, with the highest numbers in sub-Saharan Africa<\/a>. He says that although there are very effective treatments, symptoms can range from mild to life-threatening, and children under five years old and pregnant women particularly are at high risk.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Brink<\/em>\u00a0talked with Hamer, who also holds an appointment in infectious diseases at the BU Chobanian & Avedisian School of Medicine, about how malaria likely started to spread in Florida and Texas, protective measures against mosquitoes, and his biggest worries about mosquito-borne diseases, including how climate change is making them more of a threat.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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

Boston University Malaria has landed in Florida and Texas. BU infectious diseases specialist David Hamer shares his biggest worries when it comes to mosquito-borne diseases\u2014and why malaria might not be the scariest one. When the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) started operations in 1946, it had an urgent mission: prevent malaria from spreading […]<\/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-4123","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\/4123","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=4123"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4123\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4124,"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4123\/revisions\/4124"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4123"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4123"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4123"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}