That expropriation of the third world has been going on for 400 years brings us to another revelation: namely, that the third world is not poor. You don't go to poor countries to make money. There are very few poor countries in this world. Most countries are rich! The Philippines are rich, Brazil is rich, Mexico is rich, Chile is rich—only the people are poor.
But there's billions to be made there to be carved out and be taken. There's been billions for 400 years; capitalist European and North American powers have carved out at taken the timber, the flax, the hemp, the cocoa, the rum, the copper, the iron, the rubber, the bauxite, the slaves, and the cheap labor, they have taken out of these countries.
These countries are not "underdeveloped"—they're over exploited.
Whenever someone tells me that "Mosquitos are evil for killing kids in Africa" I always have to remind them that these same mosquitos exist all over the world, what the rest of the world doesn't have is the extreme level of European parasitism that fucked the continent so hard, a tiny bug can kill so many people.
You are right about the economic side, but there are different species of parasitic insects in different places and what diseases they are capable of carrying varies, which accounts for some of how we have seen the damage of European parasitism manifest.