KPDS ÜDS OKUMA PARÇASI - 15

Malaria remains probably the most serious single threat to health throughout the tropics and subtropics. A newcomer to an area in which malaria is highly endemic may be misled by the apparently robust health of most of the local people. The adults, however, are simply the relatively resistant survivors of a disease that regularly kills a large percentage of infants. The previously unexposed immigrant to virtually all of Africa, most of Southeast Asia, and much of Latin America is at grave risk of contracting malaria, some forms of which have a mortality rate of 10 % in untreated cases. Military forces and construction crews throughout history have been inactivated by this disease. Experiences in Vietnam and on construction projects in Africa continue to demonstrate that antimalarial drugs do not offer complete protection. Malaria is almost always underestimated as to its very wide geographic distribution, the high risk of infection, and the severity of the disease in nonimmune subjects.