Prevalence and Detection of Malaria at a Tertiary Care Hospital in Southern Rajasthan, India

Malaria is transmitted to humans by mosquitoes of the genus Anopheles. Malaria is known to be caused by four plasmodia species, namely Plasmodium falciparum, Plasmodium vivax, Plasmodium ovale and Plasmodium malariae, with P. falciparum being the most lethal. There are increasing reports of a fifth human-infecting species, Plasmodium knowlesi, which has been described in south-east Asian countries (Amexo et al., 2004; Beadle et al., 1994; Bell et al., 2005; Chin et al., 1968). In addition, of the five species that infect humans, P. vivax and P. falciparum cause 95% of infections. P.vivax may be responsible for 80% of the infections, because this species has the widest distribution in the tropics, subtropics and temperate zones. P. falciparum is generally confined to the tropics, P. malariae is sporadically distributed and P. ovale is International Journal of Current Microbiology and Applied Sciences ISSN: 2319-7706 Volume 5 Number 8 (2016) pp. 663-668 Journal homepage: http://www.ijcmas.com