World Health Organization or WHO highlighted serious and increasing threat of vector-borne diseases, with the slogan ‘Small bite, big threat.’
In a statement on Monday marking World Health Day the organization declared that more than half of the world’s population is at risk of diseases including malaria, sleeping sickness, Kala-azar, river blindness, filaria, trachoma and bilharzia, carried by mosquitoes, flies, ticks, water snails and other vectors.
The statement warned that South Sudan is host to most of the Neglected Tropical Diseases.
It said every year, more than one billion people are infected and more than one million die from vector-borne diseases.
WHO in its recently published “global brief on vector borne diseases’, said diseases are preventable, outlining steps that governments, community and families can all take to protect people from infection.
‘A global health agenda that gives higher priority to vector control could save many lives and avert much suffering it added.
WHO Director General Dr Margaret Chan disclosed that ‘No one in the 21st century should die from the bite of a mosquito, a sand fly, a black fly or a tick’.