From New York Times, I'm Michael O'Baro. This is Adelaide.

For decades, the world seemed to be winning the war against mosquitoes and the deadly diseases

that they carry. Now, we're once again losing that battle.

Today, my colleague, Stephanie Nolan, explains why.

It's Thursday, October 5th.

Stephanie, you have embarked on an entire line of coverage for the times about mosquitoes.

Why? Why mosquitoes? And why now?

So I went into this really thinking about solutions. I was going to do some nerdy geeky stories

because I knew there was some great new technology coming to fight mosquitoes.

And, you know, there are biggest enemies, right? They're the deadliest animal.

Well, just explain that. They're the deadliest animal.

So they kill more humans than anything else than any other living creature.

Because of the diseases that they carry.

Because of the diseases they carry. Exactly.

There's West Nile, there's Dingay, there's Malaria.

So I went into this planning to look at solutions.

And really quickly, I realized that I hadn't really kept up with the scale of the problem.

That yes, we have new tools, but we gave them because the problem has really gotten away from us.

And I covered public health, global public health for a living.

But I hadn't realized how much the kind of tide in this battle had shifted

that the mosquitoes were winning. And winning how?

They're winning in terms of our ability to control mosquito-borne disease.

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