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Cerebral Malaria

Faculty of Tropical Medicine, Mahidol University, Bangkok, Thailand and Centre for Tropical Medicine, Nuffield Department of Clinical Medicine; E-mail: nickw{at}tropmedres.ac

EXTRACT

Malaria is the most important parasitic disease of man. It infects approximately 5% of the world’s population and kills somewhere between one and two million people each year. Of the four species of malaria parasites that infect humans, only Plasmodium falciparum is lethal. Cerebral involvement causing coma in severe falciparum malaria is a characteristic but ominous development carrying a 15–20% treated case fatality. Untreated it is considered uniformly fatal. Cerebral malaria is widely quoted as being the most common cause of coma in tropical areas of the world.

WHO GETS CEREBRAL MALARIA?

In some parts of the tropics malaria is acquired as many as two or three times every day and thus everyone in the community has malaria all the time. At the other end of the spectrum, there are many areas where the chances of acquiring malaria are relatively low. For example, along the western border of Thailand, ...

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