Malaria is the world’s most important parasitic disease transmitted from one person to another through the bite of female Anopheles mosquitoes, which breed in fresh or occasionally brackish water.

Its symptoms are at the onset of malaria, bouts of chills (ague) and fever lasting several hours and occurring every three or four days. If the disease is not treated, the spleen and the liver become enlarged, anaemia develops, and jaundice appears. General debility, anaemia, or clogging of the vessels of cerebral tissues by affected red blood cells can be followed by death.

Today, malaria occurs mostly in tropical and subtropical countries, particularly in Africa south of the Sahara, South-East Asia and the forest fringe zones in South America.