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Flooded Alley, India, 2007

A man sloshes through a Kolkata (Calcutta) alley full of water turned purple from dying clothes. Standing water like this gives malarial mosquitoes the perfect place to breed. Pushed out of northern temperate zones by DDT spraying and the draining of wetlands half a century ago, malaria remains entrenched in the humid tropics of Asia. Monsoon rains and poor drainage enable the disease to thrive in many Indian cities.

(Photo shot on assignment for, but not published in, "Malaria: Bedlam in the Blood," July 2007, National Geographic magazine)

Photograph by John Stanmeyer