SO WHERE DO WE STAND IN THE FIGHT AGAINST THIS DEADLY MALARIA ? Over the long course of human history, no infectious disease killed more people than malaria. Called the “mother of fevers” by the ancient Chinese, malaria has plagued us since we evolved from apes and it once affected the better part of the globe. By the turn of the twentieth century, thanks to a combination of industrialization, urbanization, and agricultural development in the temperate world, the disease had been corralled into the impoverished tropics. To this day, despite a $2-billion-a-year global campaign, the mosquito-borne disease still infects some 300 million people a year in those parts of the world and causes over half a million deaths, most of them among children and pregnant women. The story of malaria is inseparable from the history of poverty. The conditions of poverty heighten the risk of malaria infection; the disease slows GDP growth in affected societies by 1.3 percent every year, according to a study by the economist Jeffrey Sachs. Getting rid of this one disease could simultaneously slash mortality rates and inhibit a major drain on economic growth. That is why the effort to eradicate malaria has tantalized development experts for years. It sounds like low-hanging fruit, as the scientific community has known how to prevent malaria since 1897 and how to cure it since the 1600s. In fact, malaria is anything but, because of a complex interplay of political, biological, and cultural factors.
Posted on: Sat, 19 Jul 2014 18:05:33 +0000
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