An African child dies every 35 seconds from pneumonia [1,2]. Every minute one child dies from malaria [3], one child dies from measles [4], and six children die from pneumonia or diarrhea [2]. As of 2013, the World Health Organization (WHO) estimates five children under the age of five die every minute in the African region [6]. Preventable deaths rank highest on the list of ‘under five’ childhood killers in Africa.

Barring a zoo escape or a visit to Mike Tyson’s house, I think we are safe from becoming the victim of one of Africa’s indigenous predatory animals. But our geographic separation from the African continent does not insulate us from the most deadly animal in Africa—the mosquito.

Living in a fast-food-filled Western society, diabetes isn’t necessarily a condition that one would immediately correlate with African nations. Surprisingly, diabetes is “on the rise everywhere and now most common in developing countries” according to Dr. Margaret Chan of the World Health Organization (WHO).^[1] Although Type 2 diabetes can be caused by “unhealthy eating and lack of physical activity,”^[1] it is a condition more broadly rooted in malnutrition, an issue far too familiar in African nations like The Gambia.

Health authorities have responded to last week’s Ebola Virus Disease (EVD) flare-up in Guinea by working with the World Health Organization (WHO) and other agencies to identify people who have been in contact with the recent victims. Additionally, campaigns to increase public awareness are again under way as health authorities ramp up their response to the new threat. Ebola education and awareness was one effective tool in the fight to end the EVD outbreak last year, which was the largest Ebola outbreak in history.

West African governments are facing a deluge of obstacles that are hindering economic stabilization. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) have estimated that over 11,300 deaths in Guinea, Sierra Leone and Liberia were caused by the Ebola virus. Although the World Health Organization (WHO) has recently declared all three of these countries free of the Ebola virus, the widespread casualties have left an urgent need to provide food and shelter for thousands of orphaned children.

Every day, many villagers in Ethiopia and other African countries face the harsh reality that dirty and potentially disease-ridden water is all they have access to. Sadly, many villagers must walk for hours daily in order to fill their water containers from pools that may be contaminated. Those who dare to drink the water risk fatal diseases while those who refuse to drink it may succumb to dehydration.

Question: What weighs in at one-six-hundred-thousandths the size of a King Cobra and is 10 times more dangerous?

Answer: Mosquitos

OK – lets start with the maths…

A mosquito weighs in at 10 milligrams. Therefore, you need 100 of them for a gram, right?  If you put one hundred thousand of them in a paper bag they would weigh a kilogram.  Compare that with a king cobra weighing 6 kilograms

All the venomous snakes in the world kill about 100,000 people each year whilst malaria spread by mosquitoes kills ten times that number.

• Read more about Ebola has almost gone, but life is still desperate in Sierra Leone

Malaria and Millennium Development Goals

Statistics on poverty and malnutrition leading to death indicate the extent of human suffering in rural Africa. At one time, the continent exported food to other lands. Today a third of the grain in Africa’s food supply must be imported. Farming is affected by the impossibly high cost of fertilizer. Crops don’t flourish on much of the barren farmland without it. These factors contribute to the sad truth that forty percent of indigenous men, women and children don’t have enough to eat on any given day.