How do people get afflicted with malaria?

Four species of parasites cause malaria in man. The most dangerous of these is the plasmodium falciparum that can cause cerebral malaria. This species afflicts about one-tenth of total malaria victims and might even prove fatal. The parasite enters the body by the bite of the female anopheles mosquito, which is the only mosquito type that transmits human malaria. You cannot catch malaria directly from another human being - the infecting parasite has to pass through a mosquito first. Even if a mosquito that has bitten a malarial patient bites you, the transmitted as malaria parasite has an incubation period in mosquitoes, just as it has in human beings.

Four species cause human malaria.

P. Falciparum

P. Vivax

P. Malariae

P. Ovale

Life cycle of the malarial parasite