Travelling to a malaria endemic area? Some simple steps to keep you safe

Several factors influence your chance of getting malaria in a particular area. Understanding these can help you to avoid or least minimise the risk.

Every death from malaria is a tragedy. But many infections can be prevented. This is particularly true for holidaymakers, travellers, or people visiting their families in malaria endemic areas. All they need to do is follow some very simple rules. Malaria is a complicated disease – I should know, after studying it for more than 30 years – but the solutions to avoiding and treating it can be as simple as “ABCD”. If the basics of prevention are followed, a great deal of unnecessary illness and mortality can be avoided.

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Avoidance to detection

A is for Awareness and Avoidance of malaria risk

Several factors influence your chance of getting malaria in a particular area. Understanding these can help you to avoid or least minimise the risk.

The first question to ask is: how much malaria normally occurs in the area, and when? The answer will depend on altitude and climate – generally the lower, warmer and more humid the place, the more suitable it is for malaria vectors, the Anopheles mosquitoes.

In southern Africa, most malaria is seasonal. It increases during warmer and wetter summer months (September to May in the southern hemisphere). The risk in winter is generally lower, but that doesn’t mean it’s absent.

Longer exposure, involving overnight stays, puts you at higher risk than brief visits, for example day trips to game reserves. Hiking and camping outdoors is riskier than staying in air-conditioned accommodation.

Some people are at higher risk for severe malaria and should ideally avoid malaria transmission areas altogether. These include pregnant women, babies and young children, people who’ve had their spleens removed and those with weak immune systems.

B is for mosquito bites – and avoiding them

Avoiding mosquito bites is the most important preventive measure. This is because the mosquito bite is what transmits the parasite. No bite, no transmission.

Contact between mosquitoes and people isn’t random. Mosquitoes actively seek people out. They have sensory organs that detect people’s warmth, exhaled carbon dioxide, and odours from sweat.

There are a number of ways to avoid mosquito bites. These include staying indoors between dusk and dawn and covering up bare skin when outside at night. (Mosquitoes find ankles particularly attractive.)