Coordinator for Congress Of Racial Equality - Uganda
At long last, the World Health Organization and Uganda's Health Ministry are again
emphasizing DDT and other insecticides to control a disease that kills 110,000
Ugandans every year.
But instead of applauding the decision, anti-pesticide activists are attacking
it with scare stories and lies. Every day that Paul Saoke, Physicians for Social
Responsibility, Pesticide Action Network and their allies keep our health officials
from ending malaria, another 300 babies and mothers go to their graves. It's like
sending a jetliner filled with children and mothers crashing into the Rwenzori
Mountains every day.
Even Environmental Defense, which started the anti-DDT war four decades ago, now
says this chemical keeps mosquitoes out of homes and should be used for malaria
control. But attacking insecticides is the reason PSR and PAN exist. It's their
key to fund raising and job security. So they haven't budged - and poor Africans
are paying the price.
Africans need to know the truth, and activists need to stop lying and killing
our babies.
DDT does things no other weapon, at any price, can do. Sprayed in tiny amounts
once or twice a year on inside walls of homes, it keeps 90% of mosquitoes from
even entering, prevents those that do come in from biting, and slashes malaria
rates by 75 percent. Since DDT is no longer used in agriculture, mosquitoes are
unlikely to become resistant to it, and even those that are immune to its killing
properties are kept away by its repellant effects.
This deadly but preventable disease infects over 400 million Africans annually,
and kills nearly 2 million. In Kenya alone, malaria costs 170 million lost working
days annually. It enslaves our continent, prevents people from working, keeps
tourists and investors from coming to Africa, and reduces the continent's economic
productivity by billions of dollars a year.
Any responsible organization would support doing everything possible to reduce
malaria. Instead, these activist groups worry about imaginary risks from the best
weapon in our arsenal. They tell us we should be more concerned about supposed
dangers of DDT that are microscopic compared to dangers inflicted on Africa by
mosquitoes.
Their claims about reduced lactation in nursing mothers, low birth weights in
babies and impaired immune systems in children are pure speculation. No scientific
study ever proved any of them. Malaria, however, absolutely does cause these problems.
Mr. Saoke says a new study shows DDT causes "massive IQ loss in children."
That is false. Professor Brenda Eskenazi claims test scores were a few points
below normal in young children whose mothers had been exposed to huge amounts
of DDT during pregnancy - but the problem may disappear by the time the children
enter school. Other researchers have found no such harm from DDT.
Moreover, her findings are based on DDT use in agriculture. They are irrelevant
to disease control programs that spray tiny amounts of DDT on walls. And the permanent
brain damage caused by malaria is far worse than the problems Eskenazi found.
PSR and PAN claim DDT causes cancer. But millions of soldiers and civilians were
sprayed with DDT during and after World War II, to prevent malaria and typhus.
Millions of Americans were exposed to large amounts of DDT, when the US used it
for malaria control and crop spraying. No study ever found that any of these people
got cancer as a result. (Sadly, few Africans even have to worry about getting
cancer: they'll die from malaria or dozens of other Third World illnesses long
before they get cancer.)
Claims that DDT causes fertility problems have one goal: generating fear. Hundreds
of millions of homes have been sprayed with DDT to control disease. There has
been no documented increase of Parkinson's disease, lower sperm counts, drops
in fertility, or reduced male sexual performance, says Professor Donald Roberts,
one of the world's foremost authorities on DDT and malaria.
Meanwhile, the Environmental Working Group makes the same irrelevant and illusory
claims about DDT, and then obsesses about how finger nail polish might cause "nervous
system disorders and damage to the liver and kidneys." The fact is, even
if these imaginary problems were real, poor Africans would gladly exchange them
and a little DDT in breast milk for life without malaria.
Claims of environmental harm stem from widespread DDT use in agriculture, but
even most of those claims were later refuted. Bird eggshell thinning, for instance,
was due to studies that gave birds calcium-deficient diets. US bald eagle populations
were reduced not by DDT, but by illegal hunting.
The European Union will not impose trade sanctions on countries that use DDT for
disease control in accord with the Stockholm Convention, EU Commission President
Barroso recently said. Moreover, only individual shipments with DDT levels above
prescribed tolerance levels would be affected. Carefully conducted indoor spraying
programs will ensure that this doesn't happen.
The Stockholm Convention specifically allows DDT for disease control, and will
continue to do so until an effective alternative is found. So far, no other chemical
comes close to DDT for keeping mosquitoes out of homes and preventing them from
biting.
Of course, neither PAN nor PSR has ever contributed even one shilling toward finding
a substitute, or building a modern clinic - even though they spend millions a
year attacking DDT and other insecticides. And none of these radicals lives (or
would ever consider living) in a poor African village, where malaria, infected
water and no electricity are a fact of life. What right do they have to tell our
people we must remain poor, diseased and forced to bury our babies?
These radicals are simply out of touch with basic humanitarian concerns and the
realities of life in poor malaria-endemic countries. They, and the foundations
and people who support them financially, ought to be ashamed. They are perpetuating
malaria and killing our babies.
DDT is not a magical solution to our malaria crisis. But it is a vital part of
the solution - along with bed nets, sanitation, larvacides, and modern drugs and
clinics.
Africans can worry about make-believe risks cited by insecticide-hating activist
groups - and continue enduring disease, death and poverty from malaria. Or we
can embrace DDT as one more vital weapon, and begin controlling this Killer Disease.
We are wise enough to know what to do. We need to be allowed to make our own decisions,
and not be bullied or lied to by irresponsible organizations like Physicians for
"Social Responsibility" or Pesticide Action Network.