Malaria

In addition to receiving disease exposure from Europe, the New World also became open to the sicknesses of Africa through the slave trade route. One of them was falciparum malaria, a serious and often fatal strain of the illness. Spread by the mosquito, it caused an infection of the bloodstream, and was then easily transmitted human-to-human by another of the common insects. Just as it did in Africa, the mosquito thrived in the humid, wet jungles of the Central American coast, becoming a serious problem of disease to the native population.