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MalariaMalaria is a disease carried by mosquitoes. The disease originated in Africa, but was carried to the New World by African slaves and also by Europeans who had lived in other colonies where the disease was present – as a result, the disease killed many of Brazil's settlers and many more of its Indians. As the settlers moved further into the Amazon, they unwittingly carried the disease with them so that their arrival generally corresponded with the sudden appearance of the disease among local Indians. Malaria is famous for having killed thousands of workers during the construction of the Panama Canal at the end of last century and also for an epidemic that struck the city of New Orleans in the United States in 1906, killing 60 people. Today the disease is common in many tropical countries, including India, Asia, and some islands in the Pacific. Fortunately, there are now preventative medicines and remedies to help people who catch this disease – and there are even some recent reports to suggest that a cure is close to being found. The disease can be fatal – it causes the sufferer to become feverish and delerious. Survivors of malaria are never truely free of it – they can suffer from periodic relapses, once again suffering from the fever and chills that accompany the disease. The disease gets its name because it was once thought to have been caused by humid or bad air (mal aria, in Spanish) given off by damp or swampy ground. In reality, these places were the breeding ground of mosquitoes – the real carriers of the disease.
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