You know saving the rainforest is good for biodiversity. But it may also be a boon to human health. That's because less clear-cutting may mean less malaria, according to a paper out this week in the journal Emerging Infectious Diseases.
Researchers looked at stats for 2006 from 54 health districts in western Brazil. The sites had more than 15,000 cases of malaria. The investigators compared those cases to deforestation in the same health districts over the previous 10 years. They found that a loss of just four percent of forest cover was associated with nearly 50 percent more malaria cases. And malaria risk was highest five to 10 years after the jungle was cleared.
