"This mosquito," says Fornitan, "is the most dangerous animal in the world." Indeed, Aedes aegypti presents a threat to some 4 billion people across the globe.
The world long approached the Aedes agypti plague as though it were a storm that would soon blow over, but it has now become a fixture in large cities in the tropics.
If nothing is done, experts say, more and more people will die as a result.
And it has also become clear that some of the tropical diseases carried by this insect are coming to Europe.
Partly, that is the result of rising temperatures on the European continent.
In the southwestern German city of Freiburg, for example, scientists have determined that a population of Aedes mosquitoes survived the German winter for the first time.It used to be that only those who traveled to the tropics were at risk of becoming infected with tropical illnesses.
But now, many in Europe must face the prospect of the tropics coming to them.
It was images from Brazil that sent a jolt of fear around the world at the beginning of this year. Across the country, babies were suddenly being born with heads that were misshapen and too small. When indications mounted that this curious increase in cases of so-called microcephaly was connected to the Zika epidemic that had stormed across Brazil in the previous months, the World Health Organization (WHO) declared an international emergency...
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