Graphic Panel, Nets, Screens, and Malaria

Mosquitoes have been linked with illness for thousands of years. Mosquito nets became popular around the world after 1897, when Ronald Ross (British, b. India, 1857–1932) discovered that a parasite spread by mosquitoes causes malaria. Colonial governments in West Africa were slow to adopt strategies for controlling mosquitoes, such as nets, window screens, and insecticide. Promoting the racist notion that the native population harbored the malaria parasite, many colonists lived in segregated settlements, and they provided window screens only for select European facilities.

Although malaria has been eradicated in North America and Europe, more than half the world’s population remains at risk today.

This object was previously on display as a part of the exhibition Design and Healing: Creative Responses to Epidemics.