Ian McDonald
MALARIA IS probably the developing world's most devastating killer and disabler. More than one million people die annually from malaria and scores of millions sicken and cannot work properly or live full lives because of malaria. It is not only the cause of countless individual tragedies, it also keeps afflicted countries poorer than they might be.
It is a world-tragedy, therefore, that what could quite easily be done to eradicate or minimise the scourge of malaria is not done for dumb or selfish reasons originating in developed countries. Stupidity and selfishness cause infinitely more suffering than the terrorists who sneak about this world.
The dumb reason is that DDT, the chemical hero of the old malaria eradication campaign, is now hardly used even though there is no evidence that it is more toxic to the environment or to human health than many other insecticides when it is used in the small amounts required to control malaria. But in 1972 the U.S., the major manufacturer of DDT, banned it and today very few countries continue to make it and the WHO and the World Bank strictly discourage its use in malaria control programmes. And why was DDT banned in the U.S. in 1972? In the 1960s the big chemical companies realised that DDT was unprofitable because it was so cheap. They wanted to make a lot more money from newer, more expensive insecticides in the lucrative agricultural market, so that when environmentalists, inspired by Rachel Carson's passionate 1962 book Silent Spring, began to campaign for a DDT ban, the big chemical companies happily went along. The ban on the manufacture of DDT was wonderful for profits but disastrous for developing countries where it had been saving hundreds of thousands of lives.
Come to think of it, that was not only stupid (on the part of the WHO and follow-the-leader countries) but brutally selfish on the part of the big chemical companies. That is not at all surprising. Global markets do not respond to the needs of people who don't have any money as we shall now see.
The second reason why malaria remains so prevalent is because a malaria vaccine has not been developed. This is because vaccines for diseases in poor countries don't make money for big drug companies so they don't put money into the necessary research. Well, think about it. The drug companies would much rather invest, for instance, in an anti-arthritic drug that well-insured, well-off people in rich countries will take every day than in a life-saving vaccine to be used in poor countries which will not earn a profit.
It is simple market-driven economics, is it not? The money-size, not the human-numbers, of a market dictates how much is invested in it. The governments of poor countries could intervene by paying a premium to the drug companies which would earn them profits but governments of poor countries, remember, have very limited funds. The poorer African countries, for instance, spend $18 per person annually on health, the U.S. spends $5,000 per person annually.
There is a ray of hope and it shines from Great Britain. Recently, Gordon Brown, Chancellor of the Exchequer, promised that the British Government would buy up to 300 million doses of any new malaria vaccine for distribution in the developing world. The vaccine doesn't exist yet but what the promise means is that development and testing costs will be covered and a fair margin paid into the bargain. If other developed countries would follow suit then vaccines and drugs to save millions would soon emerge.
Ian McDonald is an occasional contributor who lives and works in Georgetown, Guyana.
