This year,  the theme of World Health Day on 7 April was “vector-borne diseases.” To many people living in Europe or North America, this might seem like an odd choice. Thanks to the success of malaria elimination efforts conducted more than 50 years ago, the wealthier nations of the world are relatively free of the burden of infectious diseases transmitted to humans by animal intermediaries – anything from mosquitoes, to flies, to snails, to rodents, to birds.

But the fact is that vector-borne diseases continue to exact a huge toll on humanity. Every year, they cause at least one million deaths worldwide and drain billions of dollars from the global economy through lost productivity (i.e., sick days away from work) and higher healthcare costs. Continue reading