The Impact of Malaria, Past and Present
According to the World Health Organization, there were 290,000 cases of malaria in 2019. This deadly mosquito-borne illness is nothing new. The parasite that causes malaria was discovered in 1880, by French military doctor, Alphonse Laveran. It took 17 years for Sir Ronald Ross to determine that this parasite was transmitted to humans by mosquitoes. He dissected the stomach tissue of a mosquito, which had fed on an infected patient for four days, and found the parasite therein. Since then, preventive medications and cures have been developed for this mosquito-borne disease. Even so, there are more than 400,000 deaths reported each year. These numbers are what make mosquitoes the deadliest animals on the planet.