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HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVE
Malaria
has been a major public health problem in India. Intermittent fever, with
high incidence during the rainy season, coinciding with agriculture,
sowing and harvesting, was first recognized by Romans and Greeks who
associated it with swampy areas. They postulated that intermittent fevers
were due to the ‘bad odour’ coming from the marshy areas and thus gave the
name ‘malaria’ (‘mal’=bad + ‘air’) to intermittent fevers. In spite of the
fact that today the causative organism is known, the name has stuck to
this disease.
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