Malaria in the Lab

Sight seeing isn't all we've been doing in Uganda, we've put in a little work haha. We had free time in the afternoon one day this past week and walked down to the clinic lab and asked the lab technicians in the clinic to teach us about malaria and how they test for it. The technician walked us through the life cycle of a malaria parasite and showed us the different stages through a microscope.

Malaria is a mosquito-borne illness that is caused by a small parasite that is transmitted to humans through the saliva of a female mosquito. Female mosquitos are able to bite humans, and the males are not, so the parasites fight their way into the salivary glands of the female mosquito and then multiply.

Once the infected mosquito bites a human, the parasites in the mosquito’s salivary glands can be transmitted into the human’s blood stream. Once inside the bloodstream, the male and female parasites multiply over and over again inside of the human blood cells and begin to grow in size. The different stages of the life cycle of a malaria parasite can be seen in the poster below. The poster also shows the four different strains of the malaria parasite starting with the most common and most deadly, Plasmodium Falciparum (this is the strain prevented by the antibiotics travelers are given).

To determine whether or not a patient has malaria, a blood sample is taken and a rapid malaria test is performed. The rapid test gives the technician a positive or negative reading within a half hour. If the reading comes back as positive, the technician will look at two different blood smears under the microscope: a thick smear and a thin smear. The thin smear will allow the technician to see whether or not the malaria parasite is in the blood and to confirm the positive reading given by the rapid test. The thick smear will allow the technician to count the number of parasites in a drop of blood in order to determine how severe the malaria is. The picture below was taken of a thick smear sample through a microscope in the lab.

Once a person has been diagnosed with malaria and the severity has been established, the doctor will start treating the patient with antibiotics and anti-parasitic medicines. If the infection is severe, the patient will be given an IV with the necessary medications to allow for continuous treatment.