Last year it killed seven people in New York City. People who live in Ontario's Niagara region are now being warned to protect themselves against mosquitoes. In southern Ontario, dead birds are collected and mosquitoes are trapped and tested. Doctors who specialize in treating infectious diseases say the West Nile virus may be a significant threat in North America, but it's nothing compared to the problems mosquitoes cause in other parts of the world. In Africa, a million children die every year of malaria.
Dengue is rampant, a virus rampant in Central South America and in Southeast Asia.
For much of the last century, North America was isolated from many of the deadly diseases that have ravaged Africa and Asia. That is changing. Nearly 60 years later, there was a major outbreak in Romania, with more than 90,000 cases reported in 1996. From there, just three years later, it showed up in New York. Any disease can travel anywhere in 36 hours by aircraft, and that's shorter than the incubation period of the illness itself.