Mosquitoes-borne diseases including malaria, dengue, zika, and yellow fever are very severe, making mosquitoes dangerous. Malaria is the most deadly, causing hundreds of thousands of deaths each year. Understanding the mosquito life cycle helps protect against mosquito diseases. Removing stagnant water to prevent breeding, avoiding outdoor activities during peak mosquito activity, wearing protective clothing, using repellents, and sleeping under bednets are essential preventive measures. However, effective vaccines for diseases from mosquitoes are still limited.
So what makes the mosquito such a ‘dangerous animal’?
Mosquitoes transmit many different diseases, such as malaria, dengue, zika, and yellow fever. Every year, more than 700,000 people die from mosquito-borne illness.
Of these, malaria is the most dangerous. It is caused by various species of the genus Plasmodium, with Plasmodium falciparum being the most deadly to humans.
Every year we have 500 to 600,000 deaths from malaria, and most of these are children under the age of 5. The majority of cases occur on the African continent, though there is malaria all throughout the tropical regions of South America and Asia as well.
Human malaria can only be transmitted by mosquitoes of the genus Anopheles, and there are about 30 species that we know of that are vectors of malaria. The disease is transmitted after a mosquito takes a blood meal from someone who has malaria. With the blood meal, the mosquito takes up the parasites as well, which undergo a development process within the mosquito. It takes about two weeks of development of that parasite until they have made it to the salivary glands of the mosquito, where they will wait until that mosquito takes another blood meal. As the mosquito pierces the skin with her proboscis, she spits out a little bit of saliva to help her with the flow of the blood and slightly numb your skin. Within that saliva the malaria parasites travel to the blood stream and start a new infection.
To know how to protect ourselves from mosquitoes, we need to know a little bit more about the mosquito life cycle.
Female mosquitoes lay their eggs in water. After hatching, larvae live in water eating algae and other microorganisms and eventually pupate into the adult mosquito as we know it. In other words, water is essential for mosquito development and without it, they cannot reproduce. So, make sure you scan your backyard for places where water could stand for at least a week and make sure to remove those potential mosquito breeding sites!
Another way to protect yourself from mosquito-borne disease is to make sure that you're not outside when mosquitoes are at their peak activity.
So, at dusk it's good to just move inside if you have an air-conditioned place, or close the windows and the doors. If you can't do that, then the best is to wear long-sleeved shirts and trousers so that you minimize your exposed skin.
If that is not possible, there are repellents you could use to apply on any exposed skin. If you live in, or travel to, an area of malaria transmission, it is a good idea to always sleep under a bednet and take antimalarial prophylactic drugs in case you still get bitten. Unfortunately we still don’t have a very effective vaccine for malaria or most other mosquito-borne diseases.