Venezuela recorded the most malaria cases in decades in 2015 (HERE), ending the year with a total 136,402 cases. However, the data for the first 25 weeks of 2016 put the country over the 100,000 case threshold, a whopping 68 percent increase compared to the same period in the record year of 2015, according to the Bulletin of Environmental Health as reported in analitica.com (computer translated).

Image/Alvaro1984 18
Image/Alvaro1984 18

More than 4500 locally acquired cases were reported in epidemiological week 25 alone. The case tally so far this year eclipses the total for all of 2014.

Three of of four cases are due to Plasmodium vivax, while 16 percent are due to the more serious Plasmodium falciparum.

Eighty percent of cases were reported from Bolivar state in eastern Venezuela on the borders of Brazil and Guyana.

Malaria is considered the most important parasitic disease affecting humans. The femaleAnopheles mosquito serves as the vector for the parasite.

The mosquito-borne disease continues to sicken and kill far too many people each year, most of them children. In 2012, roughly 207 million cases of malaria occurred worldwide resulting in 627,000 deaths, according to the World Health Organization (WHO). In 2013, 97 countries had ongoing malaria transmission, placing 3.4 billion people at risk for the disease.

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