What is history's deadliest pandemic? | The Economist

 The covid-19 pandemic may have derailed the world in 2020, but a far deadlier disease has shaped human history for thousands of years. Malaria defeated armies, fuelled the slave trade and jump-started the modern environmental movement.

Coronavirus or malaria, tuberculosis and HIV?

 

World Health Organization warns that the fight against COVID-19 is hampering efforts to combat other major diseases.

More than seven million lives have been saved from malaria in the past 20 years, but progress in fighting the disease has been hindered as efforts are diverted to the coronavirus pandemic.

The World Health Organization (WHO) expects the target for reducing malaria to be significantly missed this year as funding shortfalls are putting thousands of lives at risk.

Scientists are remaking mosquitoes to fight malaria

The invention of the CRISPR gene editing tool has injected new life into a line of research called gene drive. Gene drives use selfish genetic elements to spread a modification through a wild population. Researchers have proposed using gene drives against agricultural pests and invasive species, but the most urgent application is against vector-borne diseases like malaria, which kills hundreds of thousands of people every year, mostly in sub-Saharan Africa.