WHO must take side of malaria victims

It seems that the World Health Organization (WHO) has finally accepted the quick, simple, cheap and safe solution to fighting malaria: DDT. But Africans still face a battle with environmentalists and trade blocs who oppose this demonized pesticide.

The WHO's Roll Back Malaria (RMB) started in 1998: millions of dollars later, a WHO report admits "malaria has got somewhat worse during this period." The real tragedy is that malaria would have got somewhat better if the WHO had adopted a sensible strategy from the start. Spraying the inside walls of residential buildings with DDT and other insecticides should be central to this. It prevents most mosquitoes from entering dwellings and it repels or kills those insects that do make it inside.

Over the last few decades, however, the WHO and various NGOs have deliberately discouraged the use of DDT, egged on by western environmentalists who claim it is dangerous. However, Namibia, Botswana, Mozambique and SA have experienced tremendous success by using DDT. DDT is what eradicated malaria in the southern US and Mediterranean Europe in the mid-20th century. There has never been any evidence of harm to humans or animals: one of its proponents, J Gordon Edwards, used to eat spoonfuls of it at lectures and he died this year whilst hiking, at 85.

This week the WHO said it would make DDT part of its malaria campaign. But Africa faces still faces numerous hidden barriers, such as NGOs and western governments refusing to fund supplies of DDT or threatening to ban exports from areas where it is used. The European Union threatened Uganda this year with bans on agricultural exports if it started using DDT against malaria, even though such very limited use was allowed by a little-publicized WHO rule and by the 2004 Stockholm Convention on Persistent Organic Pollutants.

These types of barriers will continue to be used against African produce in Europe and the US by governments and environmentalists unless the WHO publicly and noisily takes the side of malaria victims. Africans must demand that RBM's plans include DDT, plus a campaign to counter the opposition of western governments, NGOs, and environmentalist pressure groups. Millions of African lives depend on it.

ion