A newly published study warns: Malaria is no longer a distant threat confined to poor tropical countries. It is now at the gates of the world’s major cities.

Transmitted by mosquitoes and caused by parasites, this life-threatening disease is spreading fast — turning densely populated urban centers into new frontlines of infection.

The mosquito Anopheles stephensi, a malaria vector highly adapted to urban environments, is at the center of this shift. Originally from Asia and the Middle East, its populations are now spreading rapidly across the globe, advancing along trade routes — maritime, terrestrial, and aerial — with eggs and larvae hitching rides in water-filled cargo containers.

Driven by climate change, favored by unplanned urbanization, and dispersed through poorly regulated global trade sanitation, this species is invading new territories and turning cities into breeding grounds for malaria, including regions in North America, Europe, and Oceania, where the disease has no historical endemic record.

This is a global wake-up call: without urgent action — including stronger international surveillance, targeted urban vector control, and effective public health policies that also address the movement of goods — malaria will resurge where it was once eradicated and emerge where it has never existed.