THE BAN ON DDT IS KILLING MILLIONS IN THE THIRD WORLD

Roger Bate

While the world understandably focuses on AIDS in Africa, malaria continues to devastate the children of that blighted continent. Dr Wenceslaus Kilama, a Tanzanian malaria specialist and head of the Malaria Vaccine Initiative, alarmingly explains that every 30 seconds a child in Africa dies from the disease. ‘That’s like loading up seven Boeing 747s with children and crashing them into the ground every day … a September 11th every 36 hours’, he says. But South Africa has reduced its malaria burden by using a combination of the widely despised insecticide DDT and a new therapeutic drug called Coartem. According to Donald Roberts, Professor of Tropical Diseases at the Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences in Maryland, ‘the insecticide DDT is still the best method to control mosquito-borne dangers like malaria around the tropical impoverished parts of the world’. Unfortunately, no aid or health agencies are learning from the South African experience because of concerns about being seen to endorse DDT. But is DDT really deadly?