Global Health Progress

In one of the most field-intensive efforts to explore the connection between malaria and tropical deforestation, a team led by Jonathan Patz, a specialist in the link between environment and health at the Nelson Institute for Environmental Studies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, has established a strong correlation between the extent of forest destruction and the incidence of the Amazon’s most dangerous malaria vector, the mosquito Anopheles darlingi.

“The Amazon study site was chosen because of the rapid increase in malaria in the early 1990s there,” Patz notes. “We saw a major upsurge in the incidence of the disease that coincided with an extensive push in human settlement. It was critical to ask why.”

Read the Sory from The University of Wisconsin Madison News>>