A mosquito may be seen as a very small thing, often ignored by many across the world but it appears it is consuming more lives than any other living thing on earth.
Did you know that in 2015, mosquitoes killed more than 830,000 people across the world with the majority of them being from Africa?
According to GatesNotes, malaria killed close to a million people in 2015 with the World Health Organization confirming that 212 million malaria cases were reported in that year. The Sub-Saharan Africa region remains the hotbed of malaria, of all the deaths around the world, 92 percent were from the region.
Fact: Malaria is caused by parasites that are transmitted to people through the bites of infected mosquitoes. The parasite is called Plasmodium and is spread through an Anopheles mosquito.
In the same year, the second most killer were humans themselves. It is estimated that human led to the death of 580,000 fellow humans. Snakes killed 60,000 people while sandflies killed 24,200 people.
Dogs and Kissing Bugs killed 17,400 and 8,000 people around the world while scorpions and tsetse flies consumed the lives of 3,500 people each.
Tapeworms killed 1,600 people while crocodiles led to the demise of 1,000 people. Lions and bees killed 100 and 60 people respectively while tigers and jellyfish killed 50 and 40 people respectively.
Wolves led to the demise of 10 people while sharks led to 6 human deaths.
The things that the world has been ignoring appears to be the ones killing people the most. Perhaps it is time malaria was declared the number one enemy to human life.
In Kenya, malaria continues to kill thousands of people, most of them kids under the age of five. Although the government says that the disease has been contained, people continue to die with the majority of cases going unreported because they occur in the most remote areas.