my county alone is noteworthy for being the #1 malaria spot in the UK ;P
Malaria isn't transmitted from human-to-human unless you actually had a blood transfusion from the sick person - something I would expect the NHS should screen for. I'd assume that a high malaria rate means you live in an area where people take holidays in at-risk countries more often. If you live in a rich area then that might explain it.
1. The NHS does screen for it
2. Malaria's transmission vectors are pretty common knowledge in the West, it's up there with things like Chicken Pox, HIV and Tuberculosis in terms of public awareness
3. If you live in a rich area then you'd have low incidence since rich people know of and have ready access to antimalarial tablets, repellent and so on; even if you didn't know, I'm 100% certain if you can afford holidays a continent away without family then there must be some travel firm or the like that will tell you about malaria
4. My area is mostly immigrants and has a large African diaspora, used to be majority and still are but other immigrants are moving in now too, anyways when they go to visit family in Africa they catch it and return to the UK when symptoms arise, many wrongly assume they are immune because they were born in Africa so did not take medication
The German bloke also brought up how the migrants come from countries with low hygiene standards and add to that the already poor infrastructure of squatting camps and it's not good on the health front for anyone; just like how the Spanish gifted the rest of the old world with their STDs in urban areas the same with all diseases is true with mass immigration (for example in London
28% of Chlamydia cases come from Black Britons who are 13% of London). This is something I've never really even considered until today and I am still thinking over the potential consequences. I suppose there's just regular strain on health services and more people dying/getting rank knobbly bits in Yurope, that's bad enough. I'm also most interested in Iceland's incidences and continental Europe/Russia's incidences, since they're both at extreme ends of the scale. Even assuming sane immigration, efficient disease control is still some ways to go. Holiday goers are also a major part of this problem, especially since they're often prone to lying about their health in a desire for no personal inconvenience
with some even taking medication to hide symptoms. Going back to STDs as well, once they've infected enough people
they can spread through the casual sex network and grow exponentially. Interestingly, Svalbard is quite disease-free, perhaps because no one has any reason to go to Svalbard.
A lot of big cities probably share a lot of mosquito positive features with swamps.
Yeah we got mosquitoes and midges, though usually in such insignificant numbers (destroyed many of the old marshlands) that they aren't an issue. This summer was good for them but that's just general climate change weirdness making everywhere hospitable for mosquitoes. As far as I can tell our mosquitoes currently no longer spread much serious disease, or if they do it's just that the diseases are easily treatable.