Malaria may be returning to the United States

For the first time since 2003, local transmission of malaria has been found in two states, with six cases in Florida and one in Texas.

When the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) started operations in 1946, it had an urgent mission: prevent malaria from spreading across the United States. Back then, the southern United States was a hot spot for malaria, a potentially deadly infection caused by a parasite spread by Anopheles mosquitoes. The agency started spraying insecticide, waging an all-out war on the insects.

Their efforts worked. By 1951, the disease was declared eliminated from all states. But this once-endemic disease isn’t completely out of sight in the United States. In addition to the new cases, over 1,000 cases are also diagnosed each year in people traveling from countries where malaria spreads.

David Hamer, a professor of global health at Boston University School of Public Health and a core faculty at the Center for Emerging Infectious Diseases Policy & Research, specializes in vector-borne infectious diseases, including malaria. Hamer also holds an appointment in infectious diseases at the Boston University Chobanian & Avedisian School of Medicine.

Malaria affects about half of the world’s population, with the highest numbers in sub-Saharan Africa. Hamer says that although there are very effective treatments, symptoms can range from mild to life-threatening, and children under five years old and pregnant people particularly are at high risk.

Here Hamer talks about how malaria likely started to spread in Florida and Texas, protective measures against mosquitoes, and his biggest worries about mosquito-borne diseases, including how climate change is making them more of a threat:

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