One easy way to save up to 1 million lives a year

The world is focused on Ebola, but malaria is far deadlier, and a well-known insecticide could change that

Diana Furchtgott-Roth Aug. 15, 2014

Mosquitos in developing nations transmit malaria, one of the deadliest diseases in the world. About 1 million people die of malaria each year.  The Ebola virus has infected about 1,800 people, more than half of whom have died, many of them in Africa. Global attention is focused on the spread of the horrific disease, which has no known cure.  Yet 300 million to 600 million people suffer from malaria each year, and that disease kills about 1 million annually, 90% in sub-Saharan Africa.

If the world really cared about Africa, why not reverse the ban on the insecticide DDT to help fight malaria? An African death from malaria, a protistan parasite that has no cure, is equally tragic as a death from Ebola. Now we are debating how we should allocate experimental drugs to treat Ebola. But we have the means to reduce malaria, and we are not using it.   Eighty-five percent of malaria deaths occur among children under five years old, and it is the leading cause of death for this age group. Symptoms include fever, chills, trembling, flu-like symptoms, anemia and jaundice.......To Read More.......