Safe Drinking Water is Essential: Water-related Insect Vector
Treatment ProcessesWater-related Insect Vector
Water-related insect vector diseases are spread, as the name implies, by insects. The carrier insects, including mosquitoes and black flies, breed in or near stagnant water. For this reason the diseases they spawn are as related to water as those more directly transmitted by liquid.
Water-related insect vector diseases include malaria, filariasis, yellow fever, and river blindness.
Malaria is the most infamous of these diseases. It is caused by minute parasites, which are spread by mosquitoes. The insects breed in fresh or brackish water and, when they bite an infected human, suck in the malarial parasites along with the infected person’s blood. The insects may then transmit the disease to the next person that they bite.
In humans, malarial parasites grow inside red blood cells and destroy them—a process that causes the fevers associated with malaria. Other symptoms are chills, head and muscle aches, fatigue, nausea, diarrhea and jaundice. In severe cases, malaria victims may experience convulsions, comas, or kidney failure.
The disease is a well-known killer—particularly among children. An estimated 300 to 500 million people contract malaria each year, one million of whom die from the disease. Malaria is most common in tropical and subtropical regions of developing Asia, Africa, and South America.
Related Images
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- Mosquitos transmit diseases, such as malaria, when feeding on human blood.
- ©Sinclair Stammers/Photo Researchers, Inc.
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- A child receives treatment for acute malaria at the General Hospital in Lagos, Nigeria.
- ©Kunle Ajayi/Photoshare 2005
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