Malaria is not only treatable, it is also curable as well as preventable. However, it is known to have taken the maximum lives of children around the world. Children below the age group of five and pregnant women are more at risk as their immune system is under developed or weakened. Malaria has a track record of killing one child per thirty seconds and when in acute stages can cause death within twenty four hours. The anopheles female mosquito that bites only in the night from 11 pm to 5 am transmits this disease.

Around three hundred million to five hundred million people get infected by malaria every year and almost three million people mostly children do not survive. Unfortunately, still more than sixty percent of the people throughout the world live in malaria prone regions.

The WHO has taken up the issue of eradicating malaria from 1948, the year it was founded. In 1969 the decision of globally eradicating malaria was dismissed as the virus. The anopheles mosquito carrier eventually developed resistance to all the drugs and also to the insecticides. Also the political and social factors acted as barriers. However in spite of all the setbacks, countries like Romania, Bulgaria, Yugoslavia, Hungary, Poland, Spain, Italy, Portugal and Netherlands were successful in eradicating endemic malaria.

Prevention of Malaria can be done by ensuring protection against the infection and by finding means to minimize further development of malaria virus in already infected people. Several protection measures against this disease are there for centuries. In ancient times, the dwellers living in wet regions in Egypt slept in tower shaped structures that were unreachable to mosquitoes. Many others used nets and slept under them.

In the modern days the measures to avoid malaria and mosquitoes are repellents, protective clothes, mosquito control programs and bed nets. Research done in African countries show that implementing these mosquito-focused measures regularly, can reduce child deaths by thirty percent.

DDT was discovered in 1942. This insecticide was first used in1944 in Italy. DDT was used in many other countries from 1950 to 1960 and decreased the spread of malaria. Unfortunately, because of its toxicity over environment, this insecticide was abandoned. Newer insecticides with lesser health risks have replaced DDT.

The key to controlling malaria is early diagnosis along with prompt and immediate treatment. Studies show that even though today there are some strains of the plasmodium parasite that are drug resistant, malaria is highly curable.

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