What should you know about roll back malaria?

Roll Back Malaria is a public-health movement focused on reducing malaria through prevention, diagnosis, treatment, and coordinated action. Malaria is caused by parasites transmitted through bites from infected mosquitoes. Illness can include fever, chills, sweating, headache, and muscle aches, but symptoms vary and may begin after you return from an affected area. The phrase is not a personal diagnosis or a medicine.

Before travel, arrange a travel health consultation to review destination-specific risk and prevention options. Use mosquito protection such as long clothing, repellent, screened rooms, and bed nets where advised. Take prescribed malaria prophylaxis exactly as directed and do not share it. After travel, tell a clinician your destinations and dates if you develop fever or chills; a blood test may be needed, and malaria treatment should be selected by a professional.

Seek urgent medical assessment for fever, chills, confusion, breathing difficulty, repeated vomiting, fainting, or severe weakness after travel to a malaria-risk area. Malaria can become serious quickly, and symptoms may occur after you have returned home. Mention recent travel even when the illness resembles a common viral infection.

Ask whether your itinerary required prophylaxis, which symptoms should trigger testing, whether a repeat blood test is needed if the first test is unrevealing, and how to prevent mosquito bites on future trips.