With federal health officials reporting the first instances of malaria transmitted inside the country in 20 years, experts recommend that Arkansans take precautions to avoid mosquitoes, although they said chance of the disease spreading to the state is low.
In a health advisory Friday, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said seven people have been infected with malaria in the United States within the last two months. Six cases were in Sarasota County, Florida, and one was in Cameron County, Texas, at the southern tip of the state.
The cases mark the first local spread of malaria in the United States since 2003. According to the CDC website, "Most malaria cases diagnosed in the United States are imported, usually by persons who travel to countries where malaria is endemic. However, locally acquired mosquito-transmitted malaria cases can occur."
There is no evidence that the cases in Florida and Texas are related, according to the health advisory.
Naveen Patil, an infectious disease physician at the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences, said the cases should not cause immediate concern for Arkansans.
"Malaria transmission within the U.S. is very rare -- people need to understand that -- and not all mosquitoes even carry diseases," Patil said. "Most of the mosquitoes we have in the U.S. are more of nuisances. They do carry other viruses like West Nile and Zika, especially worldwide, so of course that's a big problem, but not so much in the U.S."
Since 2011, Arkansas has seen only 46 cases of malaria and 21 cases of Zika -- all contracted through travel. In the same time frame, the state has seen 166 cases of locally transmitted West Nile virus, according to the state Department of Health website.
Symptoms of malaria can appear seven to 30 days after a person is bitten by a mosquito and include fever, chills, body aches, headaches, nausea and vomiting, but "malaria is not what it used to be 100 years ago, and not all malaria infections are severe or fatal," Patil said. "There are plenty of medications to treat it, and you can recover in a few days."
On its website, the CDC says climate change is "causing milder winters, warmer summers, and fewer frost days," allowing pests, such as mosquitoes and ticks, to migrate to new areas and to infect more people.
Darren Moore, owner of Mosquito Hunters, a mosquito control business in Central Arkansas, said he has noticed one effect of rising temperatures: The mosquito season is getting longer.
"They can reproduce in a bottle cap of water, so it takes very little; and when it's hot, they'll go from laying an egg to a full grown mosquito in less than a week," he said. "The best thing for homeowners to do is control the vegetation and keep an eye on where water may collect."
In the health advisory, the CDC urged health care providers to consider malaria when diagnosing patients and to report cases.
The agency said there is no reason to believe that areas besides the ones where local malaria transmission has been reported are at a higher risk than usual for such cases. The key remains early detection and treatment of imported cases to minimize the risk of transmission, the CDC said.
Ly is a Report for America corps member.