Survival

These past two weeks were the busiest of the year, I think. Perhaps the busiest of all high school. I'm working on developing a hollow laugh to use when people tell me that the senior year is the best and easiest because you can just relax and do nothing. Actually, the temptation to relax is far greater but the work still needs to be done, so it's no easier at all. We are all trying not to be bitter about this.

Part of what made last week so very nearly deadly was a big AP biology project. We had to research a disease of our choice, write a short paper, and design a pamphlet about it. Excepting the late nights and trials with Microsoft Word and color printing, I think I enjoyed it. Unfortunately those things have a way of overshadowing everything else.

I chose to study malaria, the world's deadliest parasitic disease. It seems that among Americans there is a lot of ignorance or disinterest in this disease even though it has such an influence in so many countries. So I feel compelled to share some of the little I learned.

Most horrifying to me is the fact that malaria is curable and preventable and yet every day 3000 African children die from it. That's one child every thirty seconds. That's over one million people a year world wide. Unfortunately the nations most affected by malaria are too impoverished to afford resources for treatment and prevention. Endemic malaria is caused by poverty and contributes to poverty in a vicious, tragic cycle.

There are very important relief efforts administered through organizations like the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and the Roll Back Malaria Partnership, among others. What interested me most is that there is a cheap, safe, effective resource to fight malaria that is not used by these foundations. It eradicated malaria in the United States decades ago. It has reduced malaria in South Africa by over eighty percent. It can save thousands of lives. It is DDT.

One method of fighting malaria is to spray the inside of houses with insecticides. Mosquitoes that land on the treated walls die. DDT can be used for this purpose without detrimental affects on the environment because such low quantities are needed. It is a third of the price of other insecticides and much more effective. But it isn't used. African nations are at the mercy of the American organizations who refuse to fund the use of DDT because they are worried about the reaction of the American public.

Perhaps I oversimplify the situation. (Read this article to learn more.) I know there are issues regarding mosquitoes developing resistance to DDT (but the same is true of any insecticide) and questions about the effect of DDT on the environment, etc. But the fact remains that DDT is an inexpensive, reliable resource against malaria and because it isn't being used (in most countries) thousands of people are dying every day.

That's sobering.