However, these procedures are not totally efficient and they vary from country to country.Most mosquitos on aircraft do not carry malaria. The few that do are relatively inefficient invaders. In addition, further natural protection is offered by constraints of the hosting countrys climate.A list of airports at risk has been proposed. International sanitary regulations require the area of airports and the perimeter of 400 m (1,300 ft) around the airport to be made free of Aedes aegypti and Anopheles mosquitos. However, the application of disinsection varies from country to country. Outlook
Airport malaria is not considered a serious public health problem but has a high fatality rate and poses a local threat. The prognosis is poor with fatality rates ranging from 16.9% to 26% with almost all the reports being of the falciparum type. History
There were reports from as early as 1925 that diseases including cholera, plague, smallpox, typhus, yellow fever and malaria could make their way across countries within short periods of time on aircraft. Based on the International Sanitary Convention for Aerial Navigation (1933) (Hague), which came into force in 1935 to protect communities against diseases liable to be imported by aircraft, air-traffic health control administrations, dealt with by the Office International dHygiène Publique, Paris, were able to impose maximally excepted measures for this purpose, but left their actual application to each country concerned. Information regarding disease surveillance was supplied by "The Health Organization of the League of Nations" and updates were published and circulated regularly. Individual governments drew up their own regulations accordingly.
To prevent the introduction of infectious diseases from abroad into the United Kingdom, the Public Health (Aircraft) Regulations 1938 was issued by the Ministry of Health. Its actions included the "disinsection of aircraft in the tropics and subtropics to prevent yellow fever and malaria-infected mosquitoes from being introduced into the country".In 1928, the first report of insects on aircraft came from the quarantine inspector of the dirigible Graf Zeppelin on its arrival in the United States. Airport malaria was later first documented in 1969. Until 1970, malaria was endemic in Europe. Research directions
Epidemiological and entomological surveillance and research on the interconnection between malaria transmission and population movement requires attention, as to is improvement in living facilities to prevent forced movement of people, awareness of the connection between mosquitoes and malaria, in addition to adequate healthcare and the control of urbanization.Airport malaria poses a potential risk to the local spread of malaria. The UK is home to five species of anopheline mosquitoes, of which only Anopheles atroparvus breeds close enough in proximity to humans and in enough numbers to act as an efficient vector for malaria. A serious public health problem would arise if the introduction of infected mosquitoes led to the transmission of malaria by local mosquitoes, particularly if transmission were revived in an area where the disease had previously been endemic and then eradicated. == References ==