People and mosquitoes are in the same habitat, in the houses and in the outdoors of their communities or in the countryside. A healthy female mosquito Anopheles bites one person that is sick with malaria and the mosquito becomes infected with the parasite of the genus Plasmodium, and then the infected mosquito bites a healthy person and he or she becomes infected with malaria. The infection passes from the mosquito saliva to the liver cells of the person and from there it expands and infects the blood cells, where the parasites can be ingested by other mosquitoes. It can also be transmitted from a pregnant mother to her baby during childbirth, but is less common.