I am an opinionated person. I admit it. I do my best to temper this tendency, but there are some things I cannot control being opinionated about. And this is one of them. So...you need to know this:
Malaria is a very serious, sometimes fatal, parasitic disease transmitted by the
Anopheles mosquito. We are lucky and privileged enough here in the developed world to have eradicated malaria ages ago. But in other places in the world (the tropical and sub-tropical regions of the world) they are not so lucky. Today approximately 40% of the world's population (mostly those living in the world's poorest countries) is at risk of malaria.
There are 300-500 million cases of malaria each year.
There are an estimated
1 million deaths, 75% of which are children under the age of five, each year.
An African child dies from malaria every 30 seconds.The tragedy is that the vast majority of these deaths are preventable.
Yes.
Malaria is a preventable, treatable disease.In fact, in 2004 (the latest available numbers,) there were only
4 malaria-related deaths in the U.S. for the entire year. (The number of African children who died while you were waiting for your computer to boot up.)
So why the jaw-dropping mortality rate elsewhere?
The rapid spread of resistance to antimalarial drugs, coupled with widespread poverty, weak health infrastructure, and, in some countries, civil unrest, means that mortality from malaria in Africa continues to rise.
In Africa today, malaria is understood to be both a disease of poverty and a cause of poverty. Annual economic growth in countries with high malaria transmission has historically been lower than in countries without malaria. Economists believe that malaria is responsible for a growth penalty of up to 1.3% per year in some African countries. Bottom line: the more one of these country's people get sick and die from malaria, the less money the country has to put toward treatment, research, and prevention of malaria, and the training of the doctors and scientists who can do these things.
So what is being done?Well...not enough, but here's a start:
The Roll Back Malaria Partnership
Their statement:
To provide a coordinated international approach to fighting malaria — a disease that kills more than a million people each year, most of them children — the Roll Back Malaria (RBM) Global Partnership was launched in 1998 by the World Health Organization, UNICEF, UNDP and the World Bank.
The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation
Their statement:
Fighting Diseases of the Developing World:
We support efforts to prevent and treat diseases and conditions that meet three criteria: (1) they cause widespread illness and death in developing countries; (2) they represent the greatest inequities in health between developed and developing countries; and (3) they receive inadequate attention and funding.
[Regarding Malaria,] We support efforts to:
Discover safe, effective, and affordable malaria vaccines
Develop methods to control mosquitoes that transmit malaria
Find new drugs to treat the disease
Ensure access to new drugs and vaccines
Expand the use of existing tools to control malaria
Build support among leaders for malaria research and control
So...What can we do?Give money? Do research if you have the knowledge and ability to do so? Go into the trenches and help treat and educate?
I don't have the answers to this question, but that does not mean we should not be asking it. Know that.
So the next question I have is this: How long will it take politics to evolve to support humankind's new adaptation?
