THE PROGRESSIVE CONSERVATIVE, USA
An Online Journal of Political Commentary & Analysis
Volume VII, Issue # 209, September 19, 2005
Dr. Almon Leroy Way, Jr., Editor
Government Committed to & Acting in Accord with Conservative Principles
Ensures a Nation's Strength, Progress, & Prosperity
LET AFRICANS FIGHT MOSQUITOES & DISEASE
THE SAME WAY WE DO: WITH PESTICIDES
By Paul K. Driessen
POLITICAL ENVIRONMENTALISM: A MAJOR OBSTACLE TO FIGHTING DISEASE, IMPROVING HUMAN HEALTH, &
SAVING LIVES IN AFRICA -- ENVIRONMENTALIST IDEOLOGUES IN THE BUREAUCRACIES OF THE U.S. AGENCY FOR
INTERNATIONAL DEVELOPMENT, THE WORLD HEALTH ORGANIZATION, THE WORLD BANK, & THE EUROPEAN UNION
DETERMINED TO KEEP AFRICANS FROM USING PESTICIDES AS A MEANS OF DISEASE PREVENTION & PROTECTING
HUMAN HEALTH -- THE CONSEQUENCE: INEFFECTIVE DISEASE PREVENTION MEASURES & MILLIONS OF
AFRICAN DEATHS
FULL STORY:
Gulf Coast residents are slowly recovering from Katrina’s winds and floods, the resulting anarchy and looting, and the
consequences of tardy local, state, and federal governmental disaster responses. Now they face yet another peril.
Millions of acres of brackish, polluted water could become fertile breeding grounds for billions of mosquitoes. Some fear the hordes
could infect survivors with West Nile virus and encephalitis – or even malaria and yellow fever. They point out that the United
States of America had 2,500 serious cases and 100 deaths from WNV in 2004; that yellow fever killed 9,000 people in New Orleans
and Memphis in the Summer of 1878; and that malaria killed thousands of Americans every year until the 1940s.
However, a comparable disaster in Katrina’s wake is unlikely, say experts. U.S. health officials have already launched C-130 aircraft
capable of spraying 60,000 acres per day with Dibrom, which is safe for humans and the environment but extremely effective for
mosquito control.
In 1999, three C-130 Hercules sprayed for 22 days in the wake of Hurricane Floyd. They killed 99 percent of all mosquitoes across
1.7 million acres in Virginia and North Carolina. This year’s program will be even more extensive.
Inexplicably, this rapid response to health threats here in the United States stands in marked contrast to the approaches U.S. aid
programs take in developing countries wracked by diseases of truly epidemic proportions. Indeed, hurricane survivors can be
thankful that U.S. health officials are not controlled by the U.S. Agency for International Development (AID), the World Health
Organization (WHO), or the World Bank (WB). Those agencies would likely tell survivors,” Get out your bed nets and
Chloroquine.”
All three organizations decry the horrendous disease and death toll that malaria inflicts on African and other developing countries.
In fact, nearly 450 million Africans get malaria every year, and up to 2 million die. Half the victims are children.
In Kenya, malaria claims 34,000 children a year; in Uganda, up to 50,000; in Ethiopia, up to 75,000. In the Democratic Republic of
Congo, it kills 225,000 children annually!
The AID, WHO and WB bureaucrats all give lip service to insecticides. But they almost never support, promote, or fund the use
of DDT or other insecticides. Instead, they emphasize insecticide-treated nets (ITNs) and new anti-malaria drugs. This supposedly
underscores their “renewed assault on malaria” and a strategy that “has moved from words to action.”
Sadly, it’s more rhetoric than reality.
For years, AID spent millions on malaria consultants and conferences. This year, its expanded budget also emphasizes producing
55 million pediatric doses of new Artemisia-based (ACT) drugs by 2006. But, with 500 million people getting malaria every year
worldwide, this is woefully inadequate.
AID is also fostering net distribution, via partnerships with the private sector, and the World Bank recently gave Congo $30 million
to get “at least two” ITNs in each household. This, it says, “could slash child deaths by as much as one-fifth.”
Two nets per household is hardly enough, especially when the entire family could be protected by programs that spray walls with
tiny amounts of DDT just once or twice a year, programs to keep 90% of mosquitoes from even entering the home, killing any that
land, and irritating the rest so they don’t bite. And a 20 percent reduction is unconscionably low, when DDT programs get four
times that.
South Africa used household DDT spraying, followed by ACT drugs, to slash malaria rates by 93% in three years. Its success
inspired Mozambique, Zambia, and other countries to institute similar programs. But the European Union has threatened Uganda
with sanctions on its agricultural goods, if it follows suit.
WHO Director Lee Jong-Wook calls nets and drugs “proven strategies.” But seven years after the vaunted Roll Back Malaria
campaign was launched, even his own organization admits it’s still “too soon to tell” if malaria rates have gone down at all.
Moreover, with ACT drugs in short supply, many of the WHO campaign's anti-malaria kits still contain drugs that are no longer
effective against this killer disease.
The U.S. Agency for International Development claims spraying won’t work because there aren’t enough trained sprayers,
inadequate infrastructures prevent them from getting to villages, and “a high percentage of homes” must be treated if spraying is
to be effective. This is simply false.
Spraying isn’t rocket science. Training people and getting the job done once or twice a year is easier than getting bed nets and
drugs to every parent and child. And spraying protects every person in every house that’s treated.
Bed nets protect only those who use them, work only if they’re not torn, and are of little use when people are still working or doing
homework. Further, many people simply don’t use them.
Sleeping under a bed net is nearly impossible during torrid African nights, says Omololu Falobi, a journalist in Nigeria. Use the net
anyway, and you get heat rashes all over your face and body. Most villages have no electricity to power fans or air conditioners,
and many of the same environmentalists who oppose pesticides also oppose electricity generation on any scale that would power
these cooling systems.
Even in cities like Lagos, power outages are frequent, rendering fans and AC useless. “Even if you have a generator,” says Falobi,
“you don’t want to put it on throughout the night, for fear of carbon monoxide poisoning.”
Kenyan Pauline Mwinzi’s father nevertheless insisted that his family use bed nets. But she still came down with cerebral malaria and
nearly died, and her father succumbed to the disease when she was six. Today, she says, “as mother of several kids myself, I refuse
to use bed nets. There’s got to be a better way of dealing with mosquitoes.”
There is. But anti-pesticide environmentalist activists and bureaucrats – safe in their malaria-free offices – refuse to consider them.
Instead, they worry about trivial risks from pesticides – and ignore the devastation and death caused by diseases that pesticides
could prevent.
These are life-or-death decisions for malaria-endemic countries. Their health ministers must have the right to make decisions based
on science and effective use of scarce human, medical, and financial resources – without fear of reprisals if their decisions include
DDT and other pesticides, along with nets, drugs, and other measures.
America would never tell hurricane survivors they must rely on bed nets and anti-malaria drugs that are in critically short supply, or
simply don’t work. Telling Africans to do so violates their most basic human rights – their rights to health, prosperity, and life itself.
© 2005 Paul K. Driessen
LINKS TO RELATED TOPICS:
Policy Issues Relating to Energy, Environment,
& Natural Resources
Africa South of the Sahara -- Black Africa
Foreign Aid -- International Economic Development
Paul K. Driessen is Senior Policy Advisor for the Congress of Racial Equality, the Committee for A Constructive Tomorrow, and the
Center for the Defense of Free Enterprise. Driessen is author of Eco-Imperialism: Green Power, Black Death, which can be
obtained at www.Eco-Imperialism.com. Email: pdriessen@cox.net --- Telephone:
(703) 698-6171
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Dr. Almon Leroy Way, Jr., Editor
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