For the first time in 40 years, the Arkansas Department of Health (ADH) has confirmed a locally acquired malaria case in Saline County, marking the tenth case in the U.S. this year.
Amid growing concerns that mosquitoes in the region may be carrying the malaria parasite, health officials have initiated a rigorous mosquito capture and testing process to assess the extent of the potential threat. This discovery has raised significant public health concerns in Arkansas and underscores the importance of proactive measures to combat mosquito-borne diseases, KARK reported.
ADH reported that although the infected individual in Saline County had not traveled outside the country, five other malaria cases acquired out of the country have been reported in Arkansas this year.
Malaria is spread through bites from the Anopheles mosquito. Most Americans who catch it do so overseas in areas where the disease is more common, such as Africa. In the years before the COVID-19 pandemic, about 2,000 cases were reported annually in the U.S., mostly travel-related, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
With its recent locally acquired malaria case, Arkansas becomes the fourth U.S. state to report such cases this year, suggesting a potential resurgence of the disease after two decades. Florida has reported seven cases, with one each in Texas and Maryland.
While "there are almost 250 to 300 million cases of malaria all over the world, and almost a million people die, and most of them are children … maybe 30 to 40 years from since we’ve been tracking, we have not had a local case of malaria in our state," Dr. Naveen Patil, the Infectious Disease Medical Director at ADH explained.
Malaria, transmitted by infected mosquitoes, can initially manifest with symptoms like fever, chills, headache, muscle aches, fatigue, and nausea. If left untreated, it can progress to severe complications such as anemia and organ failure and is potentially fatal, according to the Daily Mail.
Globally, malaria claims hundreds of thousands of lives annually, with 619,000 deaths in 2021. Although treatable, severe cases often result in death. In the United States, approximately 2,000 cases are diagnosed yearly, all linked to international travel to regions like Africa and South/Central America.
Despite the new case, Dr. Patil maintains an optimistic outlook.
"We are now much more prepared," Patil said. "We have the diagnostic abilities, we have the medications and all those things to treat patients, so I think we are now in a better place now than we ever were before."