While featuring on SABC recently, Fiona Kobusingye from Ugandan recounted how malaria wrecked havoc on her family. Two of her sisters and her son died of malaria. Her son's death led to the breakdown of her marriage. Fiona's family members are not the only one malaria has cut down in their prime. The devastating effects of malaria can be heard anywhere in Africa.
The number of those who died of malaria has continued to rise. Many children have been made orphaned. Millions of people have died as a result of the disease. Millions more died from other diseases such as dysentery, typhus and AIDS. Malaria kills more than AIDS. Deaths from other diseases would have been stemmed if they did not have malaria at the same time. Available records in Lagos State alone show that malaria is the most relentless killer disease. Fifteen per cent of admissions in Lagos State hospitals and over 50 per cent out patient cases were involved in malaria treatments. Statistics across Nigeria shows similar trend.
Most known cheap drugs that combat malaria have over the years proved ineffective. The effective ones are very expensive and hard to get. Because of the unimpressive level of income in Nigeria and other parts of Africa, majority of people simply cannot afford the medicines else they would have no money left for food, education or other necessaries. Powerful vaccines against malaria are hard to come by.
In economic terms, the burden of malaria is worrisome considering the costs of care and absenteeism from schools and places of work during malaria attacks. Malaria makes young and energetic people sick and weak - and even terminates their lives. It strikes quickly, leaving people unable to work or go to school or take care of their families, within days after they get infected. Overall, the economic effect is colossal. In spite of apparent danger pose by the disease, attention has been largely focused on its prevention rather than eradication.
The Lagos State governor, Bola Tinubu, said recently that the state's "Eko Free Malaria Treatment Programme" has gulped over N50 million. Part of the programme is aimed at 'eradicating' malaria through the use of Insecticide-Treated Nets (ITN). The federal government has also spent huge amount of money through its "Roll-Back Malaria" programme. The Department for International Development (DFID) has pledged to commit N542 million to promote the use of insecticide treated nets (ITN) in Nigeria's Roll-Back Malaria programme.
These programmes are laudable. However, several of such programmes have done little to eradicate the disease. As you read this write-up somebody is either dying of malaria or on hospital admission treating the disease. Malaria is a great enemy of development. Its root causes are mosquitoes vectors transmitting malaria. Neither Insecticide-Treated Nets nor malaria drugs can eradicate the disease. These measures are merely preventive. The former is only helpful at night and hardly appropriate in schools, work places, churches, mosques etc while the latter is extremely expensive for poor families.
Eradicating malaria requires strong political will and compassion for human beings. However, aid providers like the United States, its counterparts in Europe and other donor agencies have caved-in to pressures from environmental activists who are opposed to the use of chemical called DDT, the safest, reliable and cheapest pesticide with potency for vectors' control. Donor agencies would not fund DDT indoor spraying programme. Mican countries are left with using whatever donors are willing to fund, Insecticide Treated Nets, which is not the appropriate tool. Ironically, their position did not take into consideration malaria victims' anger and rising body count.
Donors funded malarial programmes in Africa are not to save lives but merely to please handful of environmental activists at home. The disease was wiped out in North America and Europe decades ago using DDT. Hypocritically, donor nations and its agencies are less concerned about the economic effects of the disease in African countries. Instead they romanticise with scientifically unproved effects of DDT on humans. Interestingly, despite pressures on African nations by donors' agencies and warnings from environmental activists based in the Europe and United States against DDT's use, South Africa, Kenya, Uganda and Mauritius have taken up the gauntlet to continue its use.
One needs to ask why countries that eradicated malaria decades ago using DDT are reluctant to encourage and fund such eradication programme in Africa in the face of massive suffering. The reason lies in an attempt to keep Africa perpetually poor. The most ridiculous is the use of threat and products boycott to stop its use. For example, countries that use DDT stand the risk of having its agricultural products unacceptable in the EU, when in actual fact the world trading system is already skewed against Africa.
Another reason is that malaria is no longer a problem in North America and Europe. Therefore the Western government, donors agencies and environmental activists can afford to play politics with human lives. The cost of treating malaria and the burden it has placed on any country in Africa outweighed environmental concerns.
Malaria eradicating programme not geared towards the use of DDT capable of attacking mosquitoes vectors which cause malaria is wasteful and, of course, a clear evidence of donors' lack of political will to call the bluff of environmental activists in rich countries all of whom have never had malaria and do not know the effects of the disease on humans.
Ayodele is the Coordinator of the Institute of Public Policy Analysis in Lagos.
Copyright © 2004 This Day. All rights reserved. Distributed by AllAfrica Global Media (allAfrica.com).
