CORE Anti-Malaria Campaign
Help fight against hunger, disease, hopelessness
Since the early 70s, in addition to civil rights activities, CORE has been concerned with the plight of children on the African continent. We have worked in various ways to help fight against hunger, disease, hopelessness and the lack of technical resources that has prevented many African nations from developing as rapidly they should. Their children are the ones who suffer the most from this phenomenon.
We are happy to say that we have not been alone in this struggle. Many individuals, organizations, companies and governments have joined hands to defeat or control some of the impediments to Africa’s economic and social growth. There have been many successes, such as the massive campaign to fight the spread of the HIV-AIDS virus in Africa. Today new incidents of HIV-AIDS cases in much of Africa are nearly half of what they used to be. However, there are still serious issues, such as the devastating effect that Malaria has on the children and people of Africa that need our immediate attention. Thanks to our efforts, the world is beginning to recognize the seriousness of Malaria and to what extent it negatively impacts the lives and livelihoods of Africans. Statistics show that 80 to 90 percent of all Malaria infections in the world are in Sub-Saharan Africa. In this region alone more than one million people die from the deadly disease each year. It is the number one cause of death in children under the age of five in Africa. Shockingly, some African countries have recorded a slight increase in infections and deaths over the past few years and, if left unchallenged, parts of Africa could soon face outbreaks of Malaria in epidemic proportions. What makes this threat even more tragic is the fact that Malaria is treatable and preventable when the full arsenals of anti-malaria tools available are used. We must act NOW if we are to prevent this potential disaster from occurring.
Annual Malaria Day
Africa Marks Malaria Day
U.S. Rethinking DDT
The West's policy on DDT has been a travesty worse than colonialism ever was
A human rights violation of monstrous proportions.
By Roy Innis
06/01/2006
Every year, Africa Malaria Day, April 25, is marked by promises to bring malaria under control. But every year the calls for action turn out to be mere bombast, as health care agencies refuse to go beyond bed nets and "capacity building;" radical greens continue to obstruct proven solutions; and disease and death rates climb. This year, however, Africa Malaria Day proved changes may finally be coming.
400 Million Afflicted
More than 400 million African mothers, fathers, and children are afflicted with acute malaria. That's as many victims as there are people in the United States and Mexico combined.
Fevers, chills, vomiting, diarrhea, delirium, and unconsciousness leave them unable to work, cultivate fields, attend school, or care for their families, for weeks on end. Many are permanently brain-damaged. Nearly one million die each and every year. No wonder sub-Saharan Africa is one of the most impoverished regions on Earth.
Use of DDT Essential
Archbishop Desmond Tutu, Greenpeace co-founder Patrick Moore, and hundreds of physicians, clergy, and human rights advocates have joined me in demanding that DDT be put back into the malaria control arsenal. The U.S. Congress, Republicans and Democrats alike, now supports indoor DDT spraying as a vital component of any successful malaria control program, and the U.S. Agency for International Development has initiated DDT and other insecticide spraying programs in several countries.
Sprayed in small quantities, just twice a year, on the walls and eaves of mud-and-thatch or cinderblock homes, DDT keeps 90 percent of mosquitoes from entering, and it irritates any that do come in, so they rarely bite. No other insecticide at any price does that. DDT also kills mosquitoes that land on walls.
Used this way, virtually no DDT ever reaches the environment. But the health results are astounding.
Within two years of starting DDT programs, South Africa, Mozambique, Zambia, Madagascar, and Swaziland slashed their malaria rates by 75 percent or more. With fewer people getting sick, they could get scarce ACT drugs to nearly all victims, cutting rates even further. By contrast, bed nets might reduce malaria rates by only 20 percent.
EU, Activists Oppose DDT
Other countries want to launch similar programs. However, the European Union (EU) is again warning of possible agricultural export sanctions against Uganda, Kenya, and other countries that use DDT to save lives. Previous threats were pointed and direct; the latest are more oblique.
"Nothing will happen, at least on the official side, if they decide to use DDT in strict compliance with the Stockholm Convention" on chemicals, the EU's trade representative to Uganda said recently. But the EU has "no control" over environmental and consumer organizations that might pressure supermarkets to stop selling agricultural products from those nations, he claimed. In other words, if callous activists want to exaggerate the risks from trace amounts of insecticides and ignore the very real, life-or-death dangers those insecticides could prevent, the EU's hands are tied. It can't even do anything as simple as issuing an official statement attesting that DDT is safe and effective and represents no threat to EU consumers. If more Africans get sick and die, that's a shame, but we Europeans have our own concerns--that's the EU's position.
The struggle for human rights--especially the fundamental right to life itself--is obviously not over.
DDT helped end Malaria in America and Europe
Malaria once killed thousands of Americans annually, from New York to California, from Florida and Louisiana to Michigan and Alaska. It sent Jamestown colonists to early graves and, even in the 1930s, reduced the industrial output of America's southern states by a third. It arrived in Europe 2,600 years ago. Hippocrates described it, Cromwell died from it, and Charles II and Louis XIV nearly perished from it. From Italy and Romania to Poland and the English Channel, malarial mosquitoes ruled over Europe for centuries. Malaria was not eradicated in Germany until 1950, in the Netherlands until 1959. Aggressive interventions, including widespread use of DDT, finally ended malaria's deadly grip. Once the United States and Europe became malaria-free, however, they began to impose restrictions that have perpetuated malaria elsewhere, especially in Africa. The United States and Europe banned DDT while grudgingly leaving a rarely honored exception in the Stockholm Convention. With few exceptions, aid agencies refused to supply or support the use of insecticides, especially DDT. They still promote bed nets and education while awaiting a vaccine that's still a decade away, and awaiting mud-and-thatch huts miraculously becoming modern homes with doors and window screens.
DDT Ban Created New Holocaust
Not surprisingly, there has been another holocaust of Africans every few years, and malaria deaths since the 1972 DDT ban may in fact exceed the entire World War II death toll. The West's policy on DDT has been a travesty worse than colonialism ever was, a human rights violation of monstrous proportions. I have seen this devastation with my own eyes. Malaria destroyed the lives of my wife's African friends and family members. Last Christmas, my nephew returned to a Ugandan school that he sponsors, to find that 50 of its 500 young students had died from malaria in just 12 months. My daughter-in-law lost two sisters, two nephews, and her little son.
Time for Action
It's time for Europe to end its deadly policies. Individual countries and the EU Parliament must issue an unequivocal declaration to:
Support DDT as a vital component of any malaria control program
Affirm the right of every country's health minister to decide which weapons to use in combating disease
Agree to support insecticide spraying programs
Say trade bans and lethal supermarket campaigns will not be tolerated
Pledge to penalize any country or organization that tries to block lifesaving insecticide programs
For too long, the European Union, environmental groups, and health care agencies let horribly misguided policies perpetuate malaria's global reign of terror. They have it within their power to save millions of lives and to improve health and economic conditions for billions. If they can find the necessary moral clarity and political willpower, countless mothers and daughters, fathers and sons will be spared the ravages of this killer disease. And by the next Africa Malaria Day, there will actually be something to celebrate--not just in Africa but also in Asian and Latin American countries that are still plagued by this ancient, deadly disease.
For further reading on CORE’s work on the fight against malaria:
http://washingtontimes.com/news/2006/jul/22/20060722-112056-6127r/
Originally published 11:20 p.m., July 22, 2006, updated 12:00 a.m., July 23, 2006
Kill Malarial Mosquitoes NOW!
A Declaration of the Informed and Concerned 03-07-2006
http://www.aaenvironment.com/KillMalariaNOW.htm
Letter to the President of the United States
November 2004
President George W. Bush
The White House
Washington, DC 20500
Dear President Bush:
There is no more important human right than to live. Without life, all other human rights are irrelevant. Somehow, America’s and the world’s malaria control agencies often forget this. Somehow, in too many cases, they seem to let politically correct ideologies supersede basic humanitarian goals.
We urgently implore you to restore science, medicine and human rights as the cornerstone of our malaria control policies, and ensure that government policies safeguard the children and parents of Africa, Asia and Latin America against this devastating disease. Please:
Ask the Senate and House Majority and Minority Leadership to hold hearings to examine U.S. programs and appropriations that affect the treatment of malaria; review U.S. scientific and medical policies and practices; and ensure that taxpayer funds and U.S. policies encourage the use of new artemisinin-based drugs, pesticides like DDT and other measures that work.
Reduce, abolish or modify the USAID’s ineffective malaria program, and redirect budgeted funds for this program to the Global Fund for the Prevention of AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria, which in the past year has demonstrated markedly improved effectiveness in controlling malaria.
Instruct U.S. government agencies to encourage, promote and fund ACT and pesticide use, when requested by the health minister or other officials in developing countries, to combat malaria.
Reduce, redirect or eliminate funding for any agency or organization that delays, obstructs or fails to support and fund the use of DDT or other pesticides, or exerts anti-pesticide pressure on any African or other developing country that seeks to employ DDT in malaria control programs – including the U.S. Agency for International Development, World Health Organization, World Bank, UNICEF and United Nations Environment Program.
If you take these small steps, you will quickly help to bring hope, health and life to millions.
The United States and Europe eradicated malaria after World War II, using pesticides and other measures. But today, this vicious killer still infects 300,000,000 people every year in developing countries – more than live in the entire United States. It kills as many as 2,000,000 every year – the population of Houston, Texas: another father, mother or child every 15 seconds. Nearly 90 percent of these victims are in sub-Saharan Africa, and the vast majority is children and pregnant women. Since 1972, at least 50 million people have died from malaria. Heaven alone knows how many might have lived, if their countries had been able to control this mosquito-borne disease – how many might have become the next Nelson Mandela, Yoweri Museveni, Abebe Bikila, Pelé, Mahatma Gandhi, Condoleeza Rice, Florence Wambugu, Booker T. Washington or George Washington Carver.
Those victims the disease does not kill, it leaves so weak that they cannot work, go to school, care for their families or cultivate their fields – often for weeks on end. Malaria leaves other people so weak that they die of AIDS, and from typhus, dysentery, tuberculosis and other diseases they’d often survive if they didn’t also have malaria. It depletes these countries’ limited medical resources, and plays a major role in making sub-Saharan Africa the most destitute region on that impoverished continent.
This terrible toll could be dramatically reduced – relatively quickly and easily, compared to HIV/AIDS – using readily available medicines, pesticides and other methods. We are thus perplexed, and troubled, that aid and healthcare agencies have failed to take the necessary steps, and in many cases have actually obstructed those who want to take the necessary steps.
For years, the World Health Organization, United Nations, UNICEF, World Bank and U.S. Agency for International Development have promised to bring this killer disease under control. In 1998, the WHO-UN-World Bank’s “Roll Back Malaria” campaign pledged to cut malaria disease and death rates in half by 2010. Instead, the rates have actually increased by 15 percent in the six years since the pledge was made.
How is this possible? It is the result of deliberately substituting environmental ideology for science-based medicine. These agencies have promoted and provided financial assistance for drugs and bed nets that often do little to reduce malaria. They spend inordinate amounts of money on contractors, reports, conferences and studies. They have discouraged the use of pesticides that often bring real, immediate, incontestable benefits wherever they are employed.
Insecticide-treated bed nets are helpful. But they are expensive, the pesticides have to be reapplied frequently, many people fail to use them regularly, and they are of no value for people who are working around their homes at dawn and dusk, amid swarms of hungry mosquitoes.
The most commonly prescribed drugs are no longer effective. Thankfully, the Global Fund is finally placing greater emphasis on new artemisinin-based combination therapy or ACT drugs. But these more expensive drugs are in short supply, and it is nearly impossible to get them to 300 million patients in countries where transportation and medical systems are poor to nonexistent.
What all malaria control agencies must do – but thus far have refused to do – is support and encourage the use of pesticides, including DDT, as an integral part of their anti-malaria programs.
South Africa used DDT for years to control malaria. However, in 1996, it bowed to environmentalist pressure and switched to synthetic pyrethroids. When malaria cases and deaths skyrocketed, the government reintroduced DDT for carefully monitored programs that spray small amounts of DDT once or twice a year on the eaves and inside walls of traditional mud and thatch huts. Within 18 months, malaria rates plummeted by 80 percent. The country was then able to treat a much smaller number of seriously ill patients with the ACT drug Coartem – and through this two-pronged approach (and the use of bed nets) slashed malaria rates by more than 90 percent in just three years!
Other countries want to copy this successful program. But environmental groups are pressuring them not to use DDT, and are seeking a global ban on this and other life-saving pesticides. European nations threaten to halt the import of agricultural products, if even a trace of DDT is found on any of them. WHO and Roll Back Malaria refuse to fund pesticide programs and at times have hinted that they will penalize countries that use insecticides. The USAID refuses to fund any pesticides and continues to pressure countries to rely primarily on bed nets and not use life-saving DDT.
Clearly, DDT is not a magical potion that – by itself or in all situations – can slash malaria rates, and bring health and prosperity to Africa and other countries where this killer disease is still epidemic. Bed nets, ACT drugs, mosquito larvicides, other pesticides, education, modern homes with screens, and better public health systems are also essential. However, DDT is a vital weapon in the war against malaria, and strong American leadership now will bring immediate benefits, and save millions of lives.
Used to spray homes in the worst malarial areas, DDT repels mosquitoes for six months or more, kills any that land on the walls, and disorients or irritates those it does not kill or repel, so they don’t bite. Virtually no other pesticide has this “triple action” feature. Malaria-carrying mosquitoes are less likely to build immunities to DDT than to other pesticides, which are still used heavily in agriculture. Equally important, the pesticide is not carcinogenic or otherwise harmful to humans; and used in household spraying programs, virtually none will get into the environment.
Simply put, DDT helps ensure that bed net, drug therapy and other programs work properly – thereby saving millions of lives over the coming years, without harming people or the environment.
It is shortsighted, immoral and inhumane for wealthy, malaria-free countries to prevent African and other nations from using this pesticide to save their people’s lives. The British medical journal Lancet and numerous infectious disease experts fully support our position on DDT.
The New York Times said in a December 22, 2002 editorial: The developed world “has been unconscionably stingy in financing the fight against malaria or research into alternatives to DDT. Until one is found, wealthy nations should be helping poor countries with all available means – including DDT.”
“There is no charitable way to put it,” said the Washington Times in an April 17, 2004 editorial. “Children are dying, while Westerners worry about fictitious environmental effects. Aid agencies need to drop their opposition to the use of DDT in Africa and encourage the countries now considering using it, to do so.” The Chicago Sun-Times took a similar position a few days later.
Jurassic Park author (and PhD molecular biologist) Michael Crichton was even more blunt: “Banning DDT is one of the most disgraceful episodes in the twentieth century history of America,” he said in a September 2003 speech. “We knew better, and we did it anyway, and we let people around the world die, and we didn’t give a damn.”
Ugandan businesswoman Fiona Kobusingye puts this horrendous situation in stark personal terms. “I’ve had malaria many times since I was little,” she says. “I lost my son, two sisters and two nephews to malaria. Don’t tell me a little DDT in our bodies is worse than the risk of losing more children to this disease. African mothers would be overjoyed if that were their biggest worry.”
In our view, the continued failure to support the use of DDT (and other pesticides) in malaria control programs ignores the abject failure of current policies. It reflects a serious lapse in ethics and an appalling lack of compassion for the world’s most impoverished and disease-ridden people.
We can no longer stand idly by, and allow aid agencies, “healthcare” organizations, environmental activists, charitable foundations and wealthy nations to prevent its use, or threaten reprisals against any nation that does use it. We can no longer avert our eyes, and ignore the millions of anguished mothers, fathers and children who are struck down by this horrible disease every year.
The simple actions we urge you to take will safeguard the human rights of malaria patients, and foster the political will needed to overcome entrenched misconceptions and mindsets. They will help ensure that U.S. policies protect malaria victims the same way we protect American citizens from threats that affect only a tiny fraction of those felled each year by malaria.
On behalf of hundreds of millions of parents and children in countries where malaria continues to take a terrible, unnecessary and intolerable toll, we thank you for taking a leadership role in helping to make this a humanitarian effort that transcends religious, racial or political affiliations.
Sincerely yours,
Roy Innis
National Chairman
We are happy to say that we have not been alone in this struggle. Many individuals, organizations, companies and governments have joined hands to defeat or control some of the impediments to Africa’s economic and social growth. There have been many successes, such as the massive campaign to fight the spread of the HIV-AIDS virus in Africa. Today new incidents of HIV-AIDS cases in much of Africa are nearly half of what they used to be. However, there are still serious issues, such as the devastating effect that Malaria has on the children and people of Africa that need our immediate attention. Thanks to our efforts, the world is beginning to recognize the seriousness of Malaria and to what extent it negatively impacts the lives and livelihoods of Africans. Statistics show that 80 to 90 percent of all Malaria infections in the world are in Sub-Saharan Africa. In this region alone more than one million people die from the deadly disease each year. It is the number one cause of death in children under the age of five in Africa. Shockingly, some African countries have recorded a slight increase in infections and deaths over the past few years and, if left unchallenged, parts of Africa could soon face outbreaks of Malaria in epidemic proportions. What makes this threat even more tragic is the fact that Malaria is treatable and preventable when the full arsenals of anti-malaria tools available are used. We must act NOW if we are to prevent this potential disaster from occurring.
Annual Malaria Day
Africa Marks Malaria Day
U.S. Rethinking DDT
The West's policy on DDT has been a travesty worse than colonialism ever was
A human rights violation of monstrous proportions.
By Roy Innis
06/01/2006
Every year, Africa Malaria Day, April 25, is marked by promises to bring malaria under control. But every year the calls for action turn out to be mere bombast, as health care agencies refuse to go beyond bed nets and "capacity building;" radical greens continue to obstruct proven solutions; and disease and death rates climb. This year, however, Africa Malaria Day proved changes may finally be coming.
400 Million Afflicted
More than 400 million African mothers, fathers, and children are afflicted with acute malaria. That's as many victims as there are people in the United States and Mexico combined.
Fevers, chills, vomiting, diarrhea, delirium, and unconsciousness leave them unable to work, cultivate fields, attend school, or care for their families, for weeks on end. Many are permanently brain-damaged. Nearly one million die each and every year. No wonder sub-Saharan Africa is one of the most impoverished regions on Earth.
Use of DDT Essential
Archbishop Desmond Tutu, Greenpeace co-founder Patrick Moore, and hundreds of physicians, clergy, and human rights advocates have joined me in demanding that DDT be put back into the malaria control arsenal. The U.S. Congress, Republicans and Democrats alike, now supports indoor DDT spraying as a vital component of any successful malaria control program, and the U.S. Agency for International Development has initiated DDT and other insecticide spraying programs in several countries.
Sprayed in small quantities, just twice a year, on the walls and eaves of mud-and-thatch or cinderblock homes, DDT keeps 90 percent of mosquitoes from entering, and it irritates any that do come in, so they rarely bite. No other insecticide at any price does that. DDT also kills mosquitoes that land on walls.
Used this way, virtually no DDT ever reaches the environment. But the health results are astounding.
Within two years of starting DDT programs, South Africa, Mozambique, Zambia, Madagascar, and Swaziland slashed their malaria rates by 75 percent or more. With fewer people getting sick, they could get scarce ACT drugs to nearly all victims, cutting rates even further. By contrast, bed nets might reduce malaria rates by only 20 percent.
EU, Activists Oppose DDT
Other countries want to launch similar programs. However, the European Union (EU) is again warning of possible agricultural export sanctions against Uganda, Kenya, and other countries that use DDT to save lives. Previous threats were pointed and direct; the latest are more oblique.
"Nothing will happen, at least on the official side, if they decide to use DDT in strict compliance with the Stockholm Convention" on chemicals, the EU's trade representative to Uganda said recently. But the EU has "no control" over environmental and consumer organizations that might pressure supermarkets to stop selling agricultural products from those nations, he claimed. In other words, if callous activists want to exaggerate the risks from trace amounts of insecticides and ignore the very real, life-or-death dangers those insecticides could prevent, the EU's hands are tied. It can't even do anything as simple as issuing an official statement attesting that DDT is safe and effective and represents no threat to EU consumers. If more Africans get sick and die, that's a shame, but we Europeans have our own concerns--that's the EU's position.
The struggle for human rights--especially the fundamental right to life itself--is obviously not over.
DDT helped end Malaria in America and Europe
Malaria once killed thousands of Americans annually, from New York to California, from Florida and Louisiana to Michigan and Alaska. It sent Jamestown colonists to early graves and, even in the 1930s, reduced the industrial output of America's southern states by a third. It arrived in Europe 2,600 years ago. Hippocrates described it, Cromwell died from it, and Charles II and Louis XIV nearly perished from it. From Italy and Romania to Poland and the English Channel, malarial mosquitoes ruled over Europe for centuries. Malaria was not eradicated in Germany until 1950, in the Netherlands until 1959. Aggressive interventions, including widespread use of DDT, finally ended malaria's deadly grip. Once the United States and Europe became malaria-free, however, they began to impose restrictions that have perpetuated malaria elsewhere, especially in Africa. The United States and Europe banned DDT while grudgingly leaving a rarely honored exception in the Stockholm Convention. With few exceptions, aid agencies refused to supply or support the use of insecticides, especially DDT. They still promote bed nets and education while awaiting a vaccine that's still a decade away, and awaiting mud-and-thatch huts miraculously becoming modern homes with doors and window screens.
DDT Ban Created New Holocaust
Not surprisingly, there has been another holocaust of Africans every few years, and malaria deaths since the 1972 DDT ban may in fact exceed the entire World War II death toll. The West's policy on DDT has been a travesty worse than colonialism ever was, a human rights violation of monstrous proportions. I have seen this devastation with my own eyes. Malaria destroyed the lives of my wife's African friends and family members. Last Christmas, my nephew returned to a Ugandan school that he sponsors, to find that 50 of its 500 young students had died from malaria in just 12 months. My daughter-in-law lost two sisters, two nephews, and her little son.
Time for Action
It's time for Europe to end its deadly policies. Individual countries and the EU Parliament must issue an unequivocal declaration to:
Support DDT as a vital component of any malaria control program
Affirm the right of every country's health minister to decide which weapons to use in combating disease
Agree to support insecticide spraying programs
Say trade bans and lethal supermarket campaigns will not be tolerated
Pledge to penalize any country or organization that tries to block lifesaving insecticide programs
For too long, the European Union, environmental groups, and health care agencies let horribly misguided policies perpetuate malaria's global reign of terror. They have it within their power to save millions of lives and to improve health and economic conditions for billions. If they can find the necessary moral clarity and political willpower, countless mothers and daughters, fathers and sons will be spared the ravages of this killer disease. And by the next Africa Malaria Day, there will actually be something to celebrate--not just in Africa but also in Asian and Latin American countries that are still plagued by this ancient, deadly disease.
For further reading on CORE’s work on the fight against malaria:
http://washingtontimes.com/news/2006/jul/22/20060722-112056-6127r/
Originally published 11:20 p.m., July 22, 2006, updated 12:00 a.m., July 23, 2006
Kill Malarial Mosquitoes NOW!
A Declaration of the Informed and Concerned 03-07-2006
http://www.aaenvironment.com/KillMalariaNOW.htm
Letter to the President of the United States
November 2004
President George W. Bush
The White House
Washington, DC 20500
Dear President Bush:
There is no more important human right than to live. Without life, all other human rights are irrelevant. Somehow, America’s and the world’s malaria control agencies often forget this. Somehow, in too many cases, they seem to let politically correct ideologies supersede basic humanitarian goals.
We urgently implore you to restore science, medicine and human rights as the cornerstone of our malaria control policies, and ensure that government policies safeguard the children and parents of Africa, Asia and Latin America against this devastating disease. Please:
Ask the Senate and House Majority and Minority Leadership to hold hearings to examine U.S. programs and appropriations that affect the treatment of malaria; review U.S. scientific and medical policies and practices; and ensure that taxpayer funds and U.S. policies encourage the use of new artemisinin-based drugs, pesticides like DDT and other measures that work.
Reduce, abolish or modify the USAID’s ineffective malaria program, and redirect budgeted funds for this program to the Global Fund for the Prevention of AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria, which in the past year has demonstrated markedly improved effectiveness in controlling malaria.
Instruct U.S. government agencies to encourage, promote and fund ACT and pesticide use, when requested by the health minister or other officials in developing countries, to combat malaria.
Reduce, redirect or eliminate funding for any agency or organization that delays, obstructs or fails to support and fund the use of DDT or other pesticides, or exerts anti-pesticide pressure on any African or other developing country that seeks to employ DDT in malaria control programs – including the U.S. Agency for International Development, World Health Organization, World Bank, UNICEF and United Nations Environment Program.
If you take these small steps, you will quickly help to bring hope, health and life to millions.
The United States and Europe eradicated malaria after World War II, using pesticides and other measures. But today, this vicious killer still infects 300,000,000 people every year in developing countries – more than live in the entire United States. It kills as many as 2,000,000 every year – the population of Houston, Texas: another father, mother or child every 15 seconds. Nearly 90 percent of these victims are in sub-Saharan Africa, and the vast majority is children and pregnant women. Since 1972, at least 50 million people have died from malaria. Heaven alone knows how many might have lived, if their countries had been able to control this mosquito-borne disease – how many might have become the next Nelson Mandela, Yoweri Museveni, Abebe Bikila, Pelé, Mahatma Gandhi, Condoleeza Rice, Florence Wambugu, Booker T. Washington or George Washington Carver.
Those victims the disease does not kill, it leaves so weak that they cannot work, go to school, care for their families or cultivate their fields – often for weeks on end. Malaria leaves other people so weak that they die of AIDS, and from typhus, dysentery, tuberculosis and other diseases they’d often survive if they didn’t also have malaria. It depletes these countries’ limited medical resources, and plays a major role in making sub-Saharan Africa the most destitute region on that impoverished continent.
This terrible toll could be dramatically reduced – relatively quickly and easily, compared to HIV/AIDS – using readily available medicines, pesticides and other methods. We are thus perplexed, and troubled, that aid and healthcare agencies have failed to take the necessary steps, and in many cases have actually obstructed those who want to take the necessary steps.
For years, the World Health Organization, United Nations, UNICEF, World Bank and U.S. Agency for International Development have promised to bring this killer disease under control. In 1998, the WHO-UN-World Bank’s “Roll Back Malaria” campaign pledged to cut malaria disease and death rates in half by 2010. Instead, the rates have actually increased by 15 percent in the six years since the pledge was made.
How is this possible? It is the result of deliberately substituting environmental ideology for science-based medicine. These agencies have promoted and provided financial assistance for drugs and bed nets that often do little to reduce malaria. They spend inordinate amounts of money on contractors, reports, conferences and studies. They have discouraged the use of pesticides that often bring real, immediate, incontestable benefits wherever they are employed.
Insecticide-treated bed nets are helpful. But they are expensive, the pesticides have to be reapplied frequently, many people fail to use them regularly, and they are of no value for people who are working around their homes at dawn and dusk, amid swarms of hungry mosquitoes.
The most commonly prescribed drugs are no longer effective. Thankfully, the Global Fund is finally placing greater emphasis on new artemisinin-based combination therapy or ACT drugs. But these more expensive drugs are in short supply, and it is nearly impossible to get them to 300 million patients in countries where transportation and medical systems are poor to nonexistent.
What all malaria control agencies must do – but thus far have refused to do – is support and encourage the use of pesticides, including DDT, as an integral part of their anti-malaria programs.
South Africa used DDT for years to control malaria. However, in 1996, it bowed to environmentalist pressure and switched to synthetic pyrethroids. When malaria cases and deaths skyrocketed, the government reintroduced DDT for carefully monitored programs that spray small amounts of DDT once or twice a year on the eaves and inside walls of traditional mud and thatch huts. Within 18 months, malaria rates plummeted by 80 percent. The country was then able to treat a much smaller number of seriously ill patients with the ACT drug Coartem – and through this two-pronged approach (and the use of bed nets) slashed malaria rates by more than 90 percent in just three years!
Other countries want to copy this successful program. But environmental groups are pressuring them not to use DDT, and are seeking a global ban on this and other life-saving pesticides. European nations threaten to halt the import of agricultural products, if even a trace of DDT is found on any of them. WHO and Roll Back Malaria refuse to fund pesticide programs and at times have hinted that they will penalize countries that use insecticides. The USAID refuses to fund any pesticides and continues to pressure countries to rely primarily on bed nets and not use life-saving DDT.
Clearly, DDT is not a magical potion that – by itself or in all situations – can slash malaria rates, and bring health and prosperity to Africa and other countries where this killer disease is still epidemic. Bed nets, ACT drugs, mosquito larvicides, other pesticides, education, modern homes with screens, and better public health systems are also essential. However, DDT is a vital weapon in the war against malaria, and strong American leadership now will bring immediate benefits, and save millions of lives.
Used to spray homes in the worst malarial areas, DDT repels mosquitoes for six months or more, kills any that land on the walls, and disorients or irritates those it does not kill or repel, so they don’t bite. Virtually no other pesticide has this “triple action” feature. Malaria-carrying mosquitoes are less likely to build immunities to DDT than to other pesticides, which are still used heavily in agriculture. Equally important, the pesticide is not carcinogenic or otherwise harmful to humans; and used in household spraying programs, virtually none will get into the environment.
Simply put, DDT helps ensure that bed net, drug therapy and other programs work properly – thereby saving millions of lives over the coming years, without harming people or the environment.
It is shortsighted, immoral and inhumane for wealthy, malaria-free countries to prevent African and other nations from using this pesticide to save their people’s lives. The British medical journal Lancet and numerous infectious disease experts fully support our position on DDT.
The New York Times said in a December 22, 2002 editorial: The developed world “has been unconscionably stingy in financing the fight against malaria or research into alternatives to DDT. Until one is found, wealthy nations should be helping poor countries with all available means – including DDT.”
“There is no charitable way to put it,” said the Washington Times in an April 17, 2004 editorial. “Children are dying, while Westerners worry about fictitious environmental effects. Aid agencies need to drop their opposition to the use of DDT in Africa and encourage the countries now considering using it, to do so.” The Chicago Sun-Times took a similar position a few days later.
Jurassic Park author (and PhD molecular biologist) Michael Crichton was even more blunt: “Banning DDT is one of the most disgraceful episodes in the twentieth century history of America,” he said in a September 2003 speech. “We knew better, and we did it anyway, and we let people around the world die, and we didn’t give a damn.”
Ugandan businesswoman Fiona Kobusingye puts this horrendous situation in stark personal terms. “I’ve had malaria many times since I was little,” she says. “I lost my son, two sisters and two nephews to malaria. Don’t tell me a little DDT in our bodies is worse than the risk of losing more children to this disease. African mothers would be overjoyed if that were their biggest worry.”
In our view, the continued failure to support the use of DDT (and other pesticides) in malaria control programs ignores the abject failure of current policies. It reflects a serious lapse in ethics and an appalling lack of compassion for the world’s most impoverished and disease-ridden people.
We can no longer stand idly by, and allow aid agencies, “healthcare” organizations, environmental activists, charitable foundations and wealthy nations to prevent its use, or threaten reprisals against any nation that does use it. We can no longer avert our eyes, and ignore the millions of anguished mothers, fathers and children who are struck down by this horrible disease every year.
The simple actions we urge you to take will safeguard the human rights of malaria patients, and foster the political will needed to overcome entrenched misconceptions and mindsets. They will help ensure that U.S. policies protect malaria victims the same way we protect American citizens from threats that affect only a tiny fraction of those felled each year by malaria.
On behalf of hundreds of millions of parents and children in countries where malaria continues to take a terrible, unnecessary and intolerable toll, we thank you for taking a leadership role in helping to make this a humanitarian effort that transcends religious, racial or political affiliations.
Sincerely yours,
Roy Innis
National Chairman