STUDY OF MALARIA AND ITS VECTOR IN RAWALPINDI/ISLAMABAD REGION

Abstract

One of the most vicious diseases of man is malaria. It has played a major role in shaping history, including the decline of civilizations. Human malaria is known to have contributed to the fall of ancient Greek and Roman empires. Troops in both the Civil War of U.S.A. and the Spanish-Americ War were severely incapacitated by this disease. More than one quarter of all hospital admissions in these wars were ma l aria patients . During World War-IT, epidemics of malaria severely threatened both the Japanes and allied forces in the Far East. Malaria meaning "bad air" was so named because of association of the disease with odorous air of the swamps, particularly at night and fear of damp night air still exists even in United States. The malarial parasite was discovered in the blood b Laveran in 1880. In 1898 Ross experimentally proved the mosquito transmission of the disease and worked out the detai in the case of bird malaria. 'Iinmediately afterwards Grassi and his pupils working independently described the cycle of human mal aria in anopheles