Whilst studying mosquitoes on the shores of Lake Victoria in Kenya, scientists discovered a new kind of microbe called Microsporidia MB. It was found in the guts and the genitals of mosquitoes. After a few tests, the scientists saw that it could defend mosquitoes from getting malaria and then transferring it on to humans. To prove this, they examined all the mosquitoes with Microsporidia MB to see if any of them had malaria. In the end, not one single mosquito had malaria. The researchers in Kenya said that this has "enormous potential" to control the disease. They are now discussing whether to release all mosquitoes with malaria into the wild, or to use spores to suppress the disease instead.
This will certainly reduce the number of deaths from malaria a year, as the average tends to be 400,000 deaths a year, most of the victims under the age of five years old. The problem is that the scientists working on infecting Microsporidia MB into the mosquitoes will have to do a lot of injecting!