Video: World Mosquito Day 2023
How will climate change impact the world’s deadliest animal? Mosquitoes are the vectors for some of the world’s deadliest diseases, including malaria. Malaria is a disease of poverty, affecting 247 million people and killing 600,000+ people every year, mostly children in Sub-Saharan Africa.
Today, climate change is posing additional challenges: new rainfall patterns and mosquito breeding grounds can cause a shift in malaria transmission seasons and geographies. In some settings, warmer temperatures will shift the disease to higher altitudes, exposing new populations with low immunity and requiring changes to preventative campaigns.
Moreover, urban planners will need to consider the emergence of a new species of mosquito, Anopheles stephensi, which adapts easily to urban environments. Extreme weather events, like floods and cyclones, can provide the perfect conditions for malaria outbreaks and further weaken local health systems' ability to respond.
To face these challenges, Medicines for Malaria Venture and its partners continue to advance the pipeline of new antimalarials to deliver curative preventative campaigns to populations, as they adapt to climate change.