Context: A not very common type of malaria, Plasmodium ovale, has been identified in a jawan in Kerala. The soldier is believed to have contracted it during his posting in Sudan, from where he returned nearly a year ago, and where Plasmodium ovale is endemic.
Types of malaria

• Malaria is caused by the bite of the female Anopheles mosquito, if the mosquito itself is infected with a malarial parasite. 
• There are five kinds of malarial parasites - Plasmodium falciparum, Plasmodium vivax (the commonest ones), Plasmodium malariae, Plasmodium ovale and Plasmodium knowlesi. 
• Therefore, to say that someone has contracted the Plasmodium ovale type of malaria means that the person has been infected by that particular parasite.
• In India, out of 1.57 lakh malaria cases in the high-burden states of Odisha, Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand, Meghalaya and Madhya Pradesh in 2019, 1.1 lakh cases (70%) were cases of falciparum malaria. 
• The recent World Malaria Report 2020 said cases in India dropped from about 20 million in 2000 to about 5.6 million in 2019.

Plasmodium ovale

• P ovale rarely causes severe illness and there is no need for panic because of the case detected in Kerala. 
• P ovale is very similar to P vivax, which is not a killer form. Symptoms include fever for 48 hours, headache and nausea, and the treatment modality is the same as it is for a person infected with P vivax. 
• It is termed ovale as about 20% of the parasitised cells are oval in shape.
• Distinguishing between P vivax and P ovale may be tricky, but a good-quality lab should be able to differentiate between the two.