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| Malaria Can Be Beaten In Many Places, Map Shows |
| 2008-02-26 |
| Malaria kills one child every 30 seconds, yet in many parts of the world the disease is hanging on by a thread and could be wiped out by concerted action, researchers said on Tuesday. The first new global malaria map in 40 years shows nearly half the 2.37 billion people at risk from the mosquito-borne killer live in areas where the chance of actually catching the disease is less than 0.01 percent a year. Simon Hay of the University of Oxford said he was "very surprised" by the finding, which suggests swathes of Latin America and Asia -- and even parts of Africa -- face a significantly lower risk than previously thought. "The situation isn't quite as dire for large parts of the planet as people had imagined and, with some concerted effort, we could make very big inroads with the tools that we've got," he said in an interview. Simply using insecticide-treated bed nets more extensively could be enough to stamp out malaria in regions inhabited by almost 1 billion people. "If mosquitoes don't get enough chances to bite, the transmission cycle wanes and disappears. In these very low transmission areas, you just need to push the disease a little bit and it should collapse," he said. Eliminating malaria in marginal areas would provide a major boost to campaigns in sub-Saharan Africa, the region worst hit by the disease, where most of the world's more than 1 million malaria deaths occur each year. Africa is home to almost all the places in the world where prevalence of Plasmodium falciparum, the most deadly malaria parasite, is above 50 percent. Yet even in Africa, significant areas are more amenable to control than previously thought. Now all we have to do is convince the powers that be that some of the gazillions proposed to be spent on the imaginary problem of global warming be spent solving a real problem that destroys millions of lives. |
| Posted by:phil_b |
| #6 "killing African kids" You know, Frank, people might not like me saying it, but I do believe that for the Western environazis, that's a feature, not a bug. You'll notice "1st World" Western (i.e., white) children aren't the ones dying/being permanently debilitated. (And haven't been for what, 75 or more years?) If it were the enviros' kids, they might think differently. Or maybe not. Pfui. >:-( |
| Posted by: Barbara Skolaut 2008-02-26 22:01 |
| #5 I think Barb's right after visiting the CDC site - they're working on one, but it's not ready/out yet. DDT spraying (at proper concentration levels, unlike before) would do more to save lives than anything. Kick an environmentalist's ass for killing African kids |
| Posted by: Frank G 2008-02-26 21:09 |
| #4 I could certainly be wrong, grom, but I don't think there's an immunization for malaria. I remember my parents going to Africa for Project Hope a couple of times after Daddy retired, and they had to take anti-malarial drugs for 6 weeks (IIRC) before and after the trip. Daddy used to work for NIH, so if there were a shot they could take instead, I expect he'd have known. |
| Posted by: Barbara Skolaut 2008-02-26 19:52 |
| #3 The technique existed for 200 years---it's called immunization. |
| Posted by: g(r)omgoru 2008-02-26 17:52 |
| #2 The anti-DDT crowd has a strong Paul Ehrlich bent to it. They don't talk about it much, but they actually like the idea of population control via mosquito borne disease. Fewer poor people using up resources. |
| Posted by: Iblis 2008-02-26 14:07 |
| #1 Does this guy realize that mosquitoes bite anything with blood, not just humans? I think he has a good point though, attack it where you can win easily and save a lot of people for the price of a few square feet of netting. |
| Posted by: bigjim-ky 2008-02-26 07:21 |