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Epidemic malaria makes a comeback throughout the Amazon region of South America.
ATLANTA—Epidemic malaria has returned to the Peruvian Amazon region, with the number of cases increasing 50-fold from 1992 to 1997, says an article in an upcoming issue of Emerging Infectious Diseases.
Malaria, an infectious disease responsible for much illness and death worldwide, was the focus of a worldwide eradication campaign in the 1960s and 1970s. In Peru, the campaign succeeded in decreasing the number of cases dramatically. However, since then, epidemic malaria has slowly been making a comeback in the Amazon region of South America, and in the last 5 years has finally reached the Amazon region of Peru.
Peru now has the second highest number of malaria cases in South America, after Brazil, and most cases are in the Amazon region of Loreto. In this area, the number of cases has increased 50-fold compared with 4-fold in all of Peru. During the epidemic, the numbers of the mosquito that transmits malaria in this region also increased. Partly because of this increase, the most lethal malaria parasite, Plasmodium falciparum, increased (by 60% from 1996 to 1997 alone) and became the most common infection-causing parasite in the highest transmission areas during the 1997 rainy season.
In addition to the jump in numbers of cases and mosquitoes, drug-resistant strains of the most lethal malaria-causing parasite have emerged. In Loreto, many infections are resistant to two major antimalarial drugs used to treat them—sulfadoxine-pyrimethamine and chloroquine. Local and national governments provide malaria treatment free of charge and use a range of approaches to control malaria (including chemicals and insecticide-treated bed nets). Perhaps because of these efforts, malaria deaths are rare.
Say the authors, researchers at Loreto's Public Health Department in Iquitos, Peru, and at Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, Maryland, "Danger exists for further expansion of malaria in Loreto, especially through proliferation of mosquitoes and the continuing evolution of drug resistance."
For more information, contact CDC's Office of Media Relations at 404-639-3876. Access the full article at http://www.cdc.gov/ncidod/EID/vol5no2/aramburu.htm. All material in Emerging Infectious Diseases is in the public domain and may be used without special permission; proper citation, however, is appreciated.
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