Do you know which animal kills humans the most in the world? It is the mosquito.

I am from Brazil so that I have been surrounded by them all the time. Fortunately, I have not contracted infectious disease so far. However, it is true that mosquito transmits various germs to humans, which can threaten people?s life. In particular, Malaria caused by a parasite, mosquito continued to kill over 1million people each year despite vaccine and drugs existed.

How can we reduce these serious diseases to save people? What can we do in a desperate situation that medicine could not work some times? Here is an interesting report that rainforest block the malaria transmission. In Amazon, people who live in strictly protected area had lower rates of malaria than in area such as mining zone, road developed places.

However, increasing deforestation in the Amazon helps to raise incidence of malaria by nearly 50%. In other words, it turns out that deforestation is one of the significant ecological factors to cause a malaria epidemic. Fewer trees offer more sunshine to mosquitoes which prefer to lay their eggs in the sunshine. Parasites in mosquitoes can mature faster at higher temperature, which is caused by the deforestation. Consequently, cleaning forest provide mosquitoes with the ideal habitats.

There is a relevant research that 4% change in forest cover is related to 48% increase in malaria incidence. Unfortunately, increasing deforestation influences malaria risk in humans. Malaria is still considered the fatal killer in South America, Africa and Asia. Especially, the children are bitten while they sleep.

There are many reasons that we have to protect the forest. Keeping biodiversity, stop global warming and protecting indigenous people etc. are the goal that we have to keep in mind. However, as you can see from this article, forest should be protected for human health as well. Saving the forest must be our next step to fight with the fatal diseases.

Source :MONGABAY