Wiping Out an Infectious Disease

Dong Xueshu, an 86-year-old researcher with the Yunnan Institute of Parasitic Diseases in Yunnan Province, has been studying mosquitoes for seven decades.

Dong’s research started in 1956, when a malaria epidemic broke out in Menghai, a county in Xishuangbanna Dai Autonomous Prefecture, Yunnan.

As there was no effective medicine for treating the disease at that time, Dong, who then worked for the Yunnan provincial epidemic prevention department, and his colleagues were tasked with finding the cause of the disease to stop its transmission.

Although the Anopheles mosquitoes were already known to be the transmission medium, there were over 50 varieties of Anopheles mosquitoes in Menghai alone. Finding the specific mosquito types responsible for spreading the disease thus became a matter of the utmost urgency.

Dong and his colleagues trapped mosquitoes in the bedrooms of local villagers and outside the pigsties and cowsheds. He had even, the parasite causing malaria.