In the United States you have as much of a chance of contracting malaria as having a meteorite drop on your head. In other parts of the world, however, malaria is a scourge, and it’s getting worse.
How much worse is in dispute. The World Health Organization and a team of leading tropical disease specialists are at odds over the dimensions of the problem. WHO says the number of cases could be as high as 400 million. But Bob Snow of the University of Oxford in England and his colleagues say the number should be higher, that 515 million people are infected with the mosquito-borne Plasmodium falciparum parasite each year. They base their assessment on more than 80 studies from around the world that incorporated house-by-house surveys of active cases.
Both groups put the bulk of infections in Africa, but Snow and his colleagues say the number outside Africa is ...
