Extract
In 2017, malaria killed 435,000 people around the world. The vast majority of these deaths — 403,000 — were on the African continent. Most malaria cases are in sub-Saharan Africa.
My colleagues and I at the National Institute for Communicable Diseases track malaria cases and mosquito behaviour in SA. As part of our research we have looked at three key aspects.
One is the effect of human activity on mosquito biology. Here we looked at the effects of heavy metal pollution on various life history traits, as well as the expression of insecticide resistance in Anopheles arabiensis, which is one of the mosquito species that transmits malaria.