This TED Talk features mosquito scientist Fredros Okumu, recorded live at TED Global 2017.

I guess because I'm from Tanzania, I have a responsibility to welcome all of you once again.

Thank you for coming.

So first of all, before we start, how many of you in the audience have been in the past victim

of this bug here?

We apologize on behalf of all the mosquito catches.

Ladies and gentlemen, imagine getting seven infectious mosquito bites every day.

That's 2,55 infectious bites every year. When I was in college, I moved

to the Kilombero River Valley in southeastern part of Tanzania. This is historically one of the

most malaria zones in the world at that time. Life here was difficult. In its later stages, malaria manifested with

extreme seasons, locally known as Degadege. It killed both women and men, adults and children without mercy.

My home institution, Ifakara Health Institute, began in this valley in the 1950s

to address priority health needs for the local communities.

In fact, the name Ifakara refers to a place you go to die,

which is a reflection of what life used to be here in the days before organized public health care.

When I first moved here, my primary role was to estimate how much malaria

transmission was going on across the villages and which mosquitoes were transmitting the disease.

So my colleague and myself camped 30 kilometers south of Ifakara town across the river.

Every evening we went into the villages with flashlights and siphons.

We rolled up our trousers and waited for mosquitoes that were coming to bite us

so we could collect them to check if they were carrying malaria.

My colleague and myself selected the household and we sat inside and outside,

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