Sustainable Development: Greening Malaria

Malaria, the mosquito borne infectious disease widespread in tropical and subtropical climates of Africa, Asia, and South America, and the scourge of sustainable development has traditionally been fought with an onslaught of chemical pesticides and drugs.

DDT, for example, though banned in the United States because of its link to bird extinction, its interference with human thyroid functioning, and strong evidence suggesting its role as a possible carcinogen, is still often the go-to drug for reducing mosquito populations in an effort to stem the time of malaria. The reasoning is simple: since the 1960s when many developing nations had nearly wiped out malaria using DDT (and is in fact how Malaria was wiped out in the Southern US), malaria has come roaring back - coinciding with DDTs reduced use. It's extremely difficult to usher in sustainable development when half a billion people fall ill in a given year (the average for Malaria). A 1995 Comparison of average per capita GDP between countries with malaria and countries without found that those nations without malaria have a five time higher GDP.

This when factored in with the one million people who die from malaria annually, makes it understandable that in 2006 the World Health Organization (WHO) decided to actively support DDT as a way to control malaria.

Yet, one cannot ignore persistent DDT and other organochlorides (think dioxins) are in the environment. They don't merely kill insects, but rather travel up the food chain. This is why Inuit women of Northern Quebec who eat seal and beluga whale blubber - foods loaded with organochlorine compounds such as the pesticide DDT and PCBs- exhibit some of the world's highest concentrations of PCBs in breast milk.

Yet an increasing amount of research is showing that however, countries won't have to make a devils bargain between DDT and other harsh chemicals and Malaria. Increasing evidence, reports a recent Yale Environment 360 article, is showing that new methods, which eschew outright destruction mosquitoes and parasites and instead call for minor manipulations of human habitats such as the draining of local water bodies from puddles to canals where malarial mosquitoes hatch, can successfully thwart malaria without wrecking havoc on ecosystems.

The most striking example of success comes from Mexico, which has completely abandoned its previously lavish use of DDT in malaria control for insecticide-free methods and has seen malaria cases plummet. Mexico went from using 70,000 tons of DDT to control malaria between 1957 and 1999, to completely phasing out use of DDT in malaria by 2000, and going insecticide free by 2002. Oaxaca - Mexico's most malaria filled region went from 17,500 malaria infections in 1998 to 254 in 2002. In 2008 Mexico had no deaths from Malaria according to the World Health Organization.

Why does this technique work?

Because Malaria is as much an environmental disease as it is a disease of poverty. Mosquitoes nest in specific types of water - some prefer shady flowing waters, others require sunlit puddles etc; thus if people's exposure to the habitats of local malarial mosquitoes can be reduced, they will get fewer bites, and thus less malaria.

Malaria transmission is also dependent on the life span of the mosquito; the malaria parasite doesn't become infectious until the mosquito completes a 7-12 day cycle of development. Anything that disrupts the mosquitoes life cycle, disrupts malaria. And, as Mexico's efforts have illustrated can be extremely successful - not only has Mexico been able to slash its Malaria transmission rates it did so at 75% less the cost than traditional anti-malarial programs.

It sounds very much like a win all around.