Mosquito-Borne Disease

Divides by 8 billion people. Nearly all deaths are malaria in sub-Saharan Africa. Your risk depends entirely on where you are.

Calculate Your Risk

Hours per night between dusk and dawn exposed to biting: awake outdoors or indoors, or asleep without a treated bed net. Hours under a net do not count2 hours per day

Days per year spent in a malaria-endemic region365 days per year

The misleading stat

~700,000 deaths per year worldwide

(global average, including people never exposed)

Your actual annual risk

1 in 6,850

(0.0146% chance per year)

For comparison

Car crash (US annual): 1 in 8,000
Lightning strike (US annual): 1 in 16,000,000
Shark attack (global annual): 1 in 800,000,000

Methodology & sources

This calculator multiplies chained probabilities:

Infective bite rate: 0.004 — Site estimate: 2 unprotected hours a night for a year gives about 3 infective bites, consistent with a moderate-transmission entomological inoculation rate (Hay et al. 2005, PLoS Medicine; EIR ranges from under 1 to over 300)
Unprotected hours
Days in endemic area
Clinical malaria: 0.05 — Site estimate for semi-immune adults in endemic Africa, where most infections stay asymptomatic (asymptomatic P. falciparum prevalence of 29-31% among adults in Malawi, Scientific Reports 2020). Non-immune travellers are far higher, 30-50%
Fatal outcome: 0.001 — WHO applies a case fatality rate of 0.01-0.40% to P. falciparum cases in its burden estimates (WHO GHO, malaria mortality rate indicator metadata). Global blend is ~0.24% (608,000 deaths / 249 million cases, 2022) and is driven by children under five; 0.1% is the site estimate for adults with access to treatment

Read the full analysis →