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KUALA LUMPUR, Nov. 6 – Malaysia's battle with mosquito-borne diseases is about to take a turn for the worse.
Even the country with the Aedes mosquitoes and dengue fever, a new report has suggested that Malaysia could be "ground zero" for a new global malarial threat to the resurgence of the infectious disease that had been almost eradicated here.
According to Science News, Malaysia's human malaria cases are mostly eradicated, but the country experienced a worrying spike in monkey malaria reports that went back to near zero before 2007 to over 3,600 last year.
In the span of a decade, Malaysia racked up over 15,000 reports of P. knowlesi – monkey malaria – infections that resulted in at least 50 deaths.
Anopheles mosquito in tropical malarias is an especially important tool for the treatment of malaria.
According to the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine epidemiologist Kimberly Fornace, the rise of malaria is rapidly deforestation, particularly in the Borneo where large swathes of land are regularly cleared to make way for oil palm plantations.
This brings the population into contact with monkeys who are carriers of the disease.
Fornace tested the blood of around 2,000 native Sabah residing near or cleared forests and discovered possible correlation between proximity to cut to forests and malarial infections, which she reported to PLOS Neglected Tropical Diseases in June.
To make matters worse, a different type of monkey malaria – P. cynomolgi – in five locals and 13 foreigners in Malaysia last year. They believe this has been done by air travelers.
While much of the global studies and eradication efforts have been focused on human-borne malaria types, Nagasaki University's Malariologist Richard Culleton said "something nasty" could lie in the country's emerging malaria monkey and elsewhere in the region.
Culleton's studies suggest that the monkey malaria virus could rapidly be mutated into something that is even more infectious to humans, saying it was "like a black box. Things come flying out of it and you do not know what's coming next. "
For Fornace, we are confident that agriculture is the single biggest contributor to the rise in monkey malaria.
While there is no case in point of fact, this is one of the most important results in the field of oil palm production in Malaysia.
Malaysia is the world's second largest oil palm producer, behind Indonesia. According to the Malaysian Palm Oil Board, land in Sabah and Sarawak have been used for oil palm production from 2.1 million hectares in 2008 to 3.1 million hectares now, an increase of nearly 50 percent in under 10 years.
"It feels almost like P. knowlesi following deforestation, "Fornace was quoted as saying.
The risk is still limited to a human-to-human transmission of P. knowlesi But, as pointed out, it could just be a matter of time before a "nasty" surprise hits Malaysia.
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