The War Against The New Invasive Malaria Mosquito
One estimate puts malaria deaths at 50–60 billion across human history, which is around half the people who have ever lived. Just 20 years ago, one million children per year were dying to the disease.Advances in medicine, education, and radical interventions have put malaria on the backfoot. But the arrival of a new mosquito is causing the disease to spread in new, troubling ways that may not be so easy to stop.Malaria spreads when the mosquito bites a person who already has a malaria parasite. The parasite reproduces in the gut of the mosquito. Then, when the mosquito bites the next person, it spreads to them like they’ve shared a needle.
Even those who don’t die, often suffer terribly. They get fevers that are so bad they hallucinate. Even worse, you can catch malaria more than once. Some people have caught it more than a dozen times.In the 1990s and 2000s, philanthropists began throwing their weight into the fight. In 2008, Bill Gates announced his foundation was providing $168 million towards research to reduce malaria deaths. He would add many more millions in the years to follow — and it would pay off.As dollars poured in, we learned new and fascinating things about the bug. For example, they have a preference for certain types of blood — with Type O being their favorite. If you have this blood type, you’re twice as likely to get bit.
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