Pathogen Research Assignment
Name: Ancita Dsouza.
Pathogen: Malaria (Plasmodium falciparum)
Role: Nurse Practitioner/ Doctor. The role of a Nurse practitioner/Doctor is to recognize the symptoms of disease and provide prompt and effective treatment immediately. In the case of malaria, the disease can be fatal and severe if prompt medical treatment is not provided. The symptoms of malaria are generally non-specific making it even harder to diagnose. Some of the symptoms include fever, chills, weakness, diarrhea, vomiting, nausea, malaise, headache, and neurological complaints like dizziness, confusion, disorientation and coma. {The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC; 2012)}. When diagnosing a patient that present these symptoms, the practitioner must consider these factors such as, has the patient travelled to a country that is endemic to malaria, the age of patient (children are at a higher risk) and the clinical status of the patient (immunocompromised or pregnant). Positive diagnoses can be made with the help of a blood test after which the
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2.) Patient categories – patients with malaria fall into two main categories uncomplicated malaria and severe malaria. Patients with uncomplicated malaria can be treated fairly easily with oral antimalarial drugs, but those with more than one complication like jaundice, coma etc. require aggressive parenteral antimalarial therapy. 3.) Geographic area gives information about drug susceptibility of the infecting parasite which helps practitioners to understand the likelihood of drug resistance of the infecting parasite and provide appropriate drugs or combination of drugs and treatment course. 4.) Pregnant women can be treated only with certain antimalarial drug. (CDC