Illegal mining in the southeastern Venezuelan state of Bolívar — 238,000 square kilometers and a jungle border with Brazil and Guyana — is increasing the spread of malaria, which in 2007 totaled 28,800 cases in the area, and 40,500 across Venezuela (population 27 million). The illegal search for gold and diamonds also “implies a human invasion of the habitat of the Anopheles, the mosquito that transmits the disease, with people producing stagnant water sites, sleeping outdoors and more exposure of children and pregnant women,” Bolívar health secretary Ana Gineth Morales told Tierramérica.

Many are temporary settlements, with people moving from one place in the jungle to another, carrying the disease, and then bringing it to the cities, making it difficult to control in the whole region, she added.