The female mosquito is the deadliest animal on the planet. There are over 3000 species of mosquitoes around the world. Over 200 species are found in North America.

The adult female is the only life stage of the insect that can transmit pathogens to the new hosts (i.e., humans). It is during the act of blood-feeding that infected mosquitoes pick up or transmit these pathogens to new hosts.

Learn more about the diseases transmitted by mosquitoes in the U.S. alone.

The largest burden for Malaria is the African Continent where some 200 million cases occur each year. The World Health Organization estimates that 40 to 50 percent of the world’s population lives in areas where dengue is endemic. Yellow fever is even more lethal than all other vector-borne viruses but is not nearly as widespread, although resurgence appears to be occurring in parts of Southeast Asia and South America.

The number of deaths from malaria alone amount to more than 430,000 to 600,000 people per year – mostly children. In the amount of time that it takes you to review this website, dozens more will die from diseased transmitted by mosquitoes.

Mosquito-borne viruses new to the Western Hemisphere and North America arrived in recent years. Two of these viruses, Chikungunya and, Zika virus, are similar to dengue in some respects. Estimates of dengue cases amount to 200 to 300 million a year globally. All three of these viruses can be vectored by the “container” or “domestic” mosquito species Aedes aegypti and/or Aedes albopictus. Zika is the first mosquito borne disease which causes birth defects in unborn children. This is alarming enough, but it is also the first mosquito borne disease known in the states to be transmitted through sexual contact between humans.

Around the world, mosquitoes transmit diseases that kill around 2,000 people a day.