Defeating Global Poverty

A new survey by the World Health Organization on the impact of widespread distribution of free bed nets combined with anti-malarial medicines notes some very positive results. Here are some excerpts and summaries:

In Ethiopia, deaths of children from malaria dropped more than 50 percent. In Rwanda, they dropped more than 60 percent in only two months.

Zambia had only about a 33 percent drop in overall deaths because nets ran short and many districts ran out of medicine. But those areas without such problems had 50 to 60 percent reductions.

“We saw a very drastic impact,” said Dr. Arata Kochi, chief of malaria for the W.H.O., “If this is done everywhere, we can reduce the disease burden 80 to 85 percent in most African countries within five years"

He estimates this 5-year campaign would cost about $10 billion and would reduce the death rate due to malaria to thousands per year rather than millions per year who now die.

Reporting on this report in The Economist and New York Times.

Labels: africa, malaria, poverty

I previously wrote about how there is growing widespread support for indoor residential (not crop) spraying of [small amounts of] DDT as the most effective (cost and results) way of decreasing malaria in many countries and especially Africa.

Dr. Roger Bate, board member of Africa Fighting Malaria, comments that "DDT is probably the single most valuable chemical ever synthesized to prevent disease. It has been used continually in public health programs over the past sixty years and has saved millions from diseases like malaria, typhus, and yellow fever. Despite a public backlash in the 1960s, mainstream scientific and public health communities continue to recognize its utility and safety."

He goes on to say, "Developing nations are skittish. Their populations have been scared by environmentalists into thinking DDT causes cancer and birth defects; and their farmers have been frightened by EU officials and segments of the Western chemical industry into believing their crop exports will be boycotted. As a result, many African leaders have delayed re-introduction of DDT, perhaps indefinitely. Over the past three years, for example, two different Ugandan health ministers have wanted to deploy DDT indoors, but fearful of Western trade reprisals, their farmers have blocked all attempts to do so."

Find out more on advocacy site FightingMalaria.org

What ideas do you have in helping to overcome the misperceptions of DDT?

Labels: ddt, malaria, poverty

Uganda health experts are asking the developed world to allow them to strategically deploy DDT-based products to fight malaria.

Here are some stats on malaria:

• Over 10 million Ugandans are infected each year
• Up to 100,000 Ugandans die from malaria each year

Using an inferior product (more expensive, lasts shorter duration and costs more), Icon, Uganda was able to reduce a 100,000 local population carrying the disease (a key factor in long-term impact on malaria) from 30% to 3%! This investment more than paid for itself in lower healthcare costs and human productivity let alone human suffering.

The issue is that DDT has been banned by western governments since 1972 and international aid requires that receiving countries also ban DDT. There is no plan to use DDT for agriculture (which is why it was banned), but simply for household use to help kill the mosquitoes carrying the malaria disease. While the research now is very clear, G8 environmentalist still are against any uses of DDT.

See full article in WSJ, Give us DDT.

UPDATE 8-20-2007: New York Times article, A New Home for DDT, refers to new research that DDT has the added benefit that mosquitoes which are immune to DDT are still repelled by it making it an extremely effective indoor malaria (and yellow fever and dengue fever) prevention technology.

Labels: africa, ddt, malaria, poverty, uganda

I am always interested in practical ways that most people can contribute to defeating global poverty. It seems like so often the ideas coming our way are so indirect ... through one or more intermediary whom you give money to and then it passes down the chain and trust that it actually benefits the needy recipient.

Africa@home (modelled after SETI@home) is a collaboration between the Swiss Tropical Institute, CERN and a group of universities to develop a long-term model of malaria epidemiology which can be used to test different ways of combatting the disease. You can donate extra cycles on your PC to help solve malaria at MalariaControl.net. In fact, they have had so much interest that they've temporarily stopped accepting computer cycle donations!

I think that this kind of response demonstrates a desire for people to help out with what they have. I hope that this will encourage other grid computing projects to help defeat poverty!

Please post comment if you have other sources for this type of program.

Labels: distributed computing, malaria, poverty, seti