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Every 30 seconds someone in the world dies of malaria. Yet this terrible scourge to humanity is barely on the radar screen in the US. Growing up, the only thing I knew about malaria is that it killed a lot of people way back when Teddy Roosevelt was building the Panama Canal. When finally they found out that mosquitos carried malaria, as far as I knew, the problem was solved.
I had no idea till recently that malaria was a current day issue. Of course that’s because it’s not an issue where I live, in America. The vast majority of malaria fatalities (85-90%) occur in sub-Saharan Africa. An article in The Ethiopian Herald (September 27, 2006) stated that “16 million cases are now reported [in Ethiopia]. Some 40,000 people died of malaria in 1996 (Ethiopian calendar), 19,000 of whom [were] children.” Pregnant women also are exceptionally vulnerable to malaria.
Not only is malaria a terrible physical burden on a country, it is also devastating to a country financially. The Daily Monitor,September 25, 2006 reports:
“Figures on economic costs indicate that malaria accounts for loss of up to 5 % of GDP of countries in Africa. This means that malaria continues to slow economic growth by more than 1 % of the GDP per year,” they said.
In an interview with APA, Dr.Afewrok Hailemariam, one of the participants said that malaria-endemic countries were among the world’s most impoverished countries in the world.
“A malaria-affected family in Africa spends over 25 % of its income on treatment for and prevention against the disease.” The researcher also said the loss was resulting in impairment of learning and class absenteeism in children in malaria-endemic areas.
But there is hope that Africa may eventually win the battle over malaria. In an October 5th story in the New York Times The Revival of a Notorious Solution to a Notorious Scourge, the new WHO plan is laid out.
One reason the mosquitoes are winning is that the world had essentially discarded its single most effective weapon, DDT. But Washington recently resumed financing the use of DDT overseas, and the dynamic new malaria chief of the World Health Organization, Arata Kochi, has said that the W.H.O., too, endorses widespread indoor house spraying with DDT.
This is excellent news for the humans in Africa. DDT both repels mosquitoes and kills them. It is the cheapest, longest lasting and most effective insecticide, and it will not threaten the ecosystem. Unlike in the past, DDT will now be sprayed inside houses once or twice a year in minute amounts.
DDT was banned in the US years ago, and there is some controversy about using it again. But this article makes a convincing argument for the life-saving difference DDT could make in Africa.
Ethiopia: Bottlenecks Slow Country’s Fight Against Malaria
SciDev.Net (London) October 11, 2006
The article I read on using DDT again, even indoors said that it was a matter of weighing the risks, and the results of no DDT use were far more devastating than those of using it. It is kind of a nasty chemical, but obviously malaria is worse.
I was watching Animal Planet with my 8 year old and they were counting down the 10 creatures that killed the most people each year, and mosquitoes were #1.
My co-workers in Africa have all had at least one sibling die of Malaria. At least one. Many were under the age of 5 when they died, but still.
In Africa, that is just the fact of life…kids get Malaria and die. Can you imagine? It was shocked when I heard them talking about it..