To avoid the water the spider, en mass, took refuge in nearby trees. The web encased trees snare most of the local mosquitoes reportedly leading to reduced malaria in the area (thanks Saket).

Notice the major peaks corresponding to the ‘discovery’ period (1890-1920) and war/eradication era (1940-1960) for malaria followed by a steady decline with a small uptick in the last ten years.

I did see the ‘mosquito death ray’ invention a few months ago when it hit the web echo chamber – and did not write about it because it obviously had no realistic implication for malaria control. Why would someone build this? I assumed it was the too-much-free time creation of some garage hobbyist or, at best, a proof of concept for some other application, maybe the defense industry. Why the creator went to TED (or why they accepted) is beyond me. I’m glad someone is calling both groups out.

Addendum: Bart Knols, at our friend MalariaWorld, actually took pains to criticize the laser a month back

Comparing some stats between last year and this one:

The top twenty countries in terms of visitors:

While the list generally reflects internet availability/users, I am happy to see that nearly half are malaria endemic nations.

So this is what I’ve been writing about. Courtesy of Wordle.

• 1,518 unique visitors
• from 79 countries
• 45 posts, 11,157 words
• Top 3 posts:

1. Cellscope
2. Eradication vs control
3. GSK ends lapdap

Falciparum kills people, vivax kills the nation

It’s an old anecdote which mirrored the classic malaria scenario in the country. In 1970, Plasmodium falciparum, the parasite species associated with higher mortality, comprised only 14 percent of all cases. Still, the parasite was responsible for many deaths but it was  Plasmodium vivax which was destroying communities by incapacitating millions of workers. Now, 50 percent of reported malaria cases are P.falciparum and several outbreaks of fatal P.vivax were reported last year. How times have changed…