Despite medical breakthroughs for treatment and prevention, malaria continues to be deadly around the world, with children under age 5 being the most vulnerable. A November 2023 World Health Organization report showed that in 2022, there were an estimated 249 million cases of malaria globally. This is a significant increase from pre-pandemic years, and climate change may be to blame.
Warmer temperatures speed up the growth cycle of the malaria parasite in the Anopheles mosquito, enabling it to develop more quickly for transmission, reports The Lancet. Only female mosquitoes of the genus Anopheles can transmit malaria, and they must have been infected through a previous blood meal from an infected person. As some parts of the world become wetter and hotter, the conditions are more favorable for the Anopheles mosquitoes to reproduce.
After a natural disaster like a flood, hurricane or typhoon, substandard housing can significantly increase the risk of contracting malaria due to the lack of separation from the outdoors. Mosquito nets can help, but don’t address the root cause of the problem: mitigating the worst effects of climate change by reducing greenhouse gasses. Like many of the health risks brought from climate change, they are compounding and often coexisting.
The role of health care journalists
Parts of the world that have not historically had malaria, or where the disease had been eradicated through insecticides and other measures, may soon see new cases as the habitat range for malaria-carrying mosquitoes grows. Some of these mosquitoes are more resistant to historic treatments, like Anopheles stephensi, a malaria-carrying mosquito that thrives in urban environments and is more resistant to insecticides.
Reporters can help educate the public by explaining how and why a warming climate alters the suitable living conditions for species, including malaria-carrying mosquitoes. According to Jeff Goodell’s book “The Heat Will Kill You First,” mosquitos that can carry malaria are moving to higher, cooler latitudes at an average rate of 2.5 miles per year.
New York Times Global Health Reporter Stephanie Nolen, who has traveled the world to report on the growing health threat of mosquitoes, wrote in November 2023 that new cases were concentrated in five countries: Pakistan, Nigeria, Uganda, Ethiopia and Papua-New Guinea. Daniel Ngamije, M.D., M.P.H., who directs the WHO’s global malaria program, told the New York Times that climate change was a direct contributor in three of them.
Conflict and climate change are driving up cases of malaria, a trend seen in countries around the world. Conflict compromises sanitation systems and displaces people, forcing them to be outside for longer periods of time and exposing them to malaria-carrying mosquitoes.
Covering this story
It’s crucial that health care journalists reporting on malaria in places where it could appear or return educate readers as much as possible about its symptoms and direct them to useful resources. The CDC provides information on the diagnosis and recognition of malaria and has informative packets in Spanish. In areas where malaria is not endemic, there will be a learning curve for adapting to live with the disease. Journalists can help by raising awareness ahead of the spread of malaria.
UNICEF has an interactive, easy-to-use data resource that is open to the public. This map shows the percentage of deaths caused by malaria in children under the age of 5 in Africa. You can toggle between 2000 and 2021.
As health care reporters, the public often looks to us first for health guidance. The Guardian wrote a piece about how the malaria drug Donald Trump touted as a Covid cure increased chance of death.
In our line of work, misguided and false claims can lead to injury or, in extreme cases, death. As life-threatening diseases like malaria take root in new places around the world, the public deserves to be informed about how to combat the disease.
Now is an interesting time to cover malaria because there is a lot of movement on both the eradication and proliferation of the disease in new places. Decades of research has produced vaccines that have shown to be effective. The R21 vaccine was shown to reduce symptomatic cases of malaria by 75% during the 12 months following a 3-dose series, according to the WHO. Countries across Africa, where malaria is most prevalent, are rolling out broad usage.
Video guides
- Malaria Life Cycle Animation: Mosquito Host — BioInteractive
- Climate change and malaria — UNICEF
- A threat to the malaria eradication effort (short) — A presentation by Bill Gates
Additional resources
- The Mosquitoes Are Winning — New York Times
- An Invasive Mosquito Threatens Catastrophe in Africa — New York Times
- Mosquitoes Are a Growing Public Health Threat, Reversing Years of Progress — New York Times
- The Gamble: Can Genetically Modified Mosquitoes End Disease? — New York Times
- Where Malaria is Spreading — Washington Post
- Malaria cases could ebb in an even hotter world. But other diseases will get worse — Science
- COP28: A Call To Stop Climate Change From Derailing The Fight Against Malaria — Forbes
- Diseases Take Flight with Climate Change — Harvard Medicine
- Updated WHO guidance for controlling vector-borne diseases through indoor residual spraying — WHO
