The silent pandemic: while exotic diseases like bird flu and SARS get all the attention, malaria is still killing millions in Africa, despite the fact that DDT remains an effective and affordable solution.(ENVIRONMENT)

A worldwide pandemic of staggering proportions is underway, killing many millions of people and sickening millions more. This pandemic is not the dreaded bird flu; it is not the frightful Ebola virus. The epidemic is malaria. According the Centers for Disease Control (CDC), the disease causes "at least one million deaths ... each year. The disease is especially rampant in Africa, where it has exacted an appalling toll on children. According to correspondent Dr. Carolyn Demasi, reporting for the Australian news program Catalyst, "Every 30 seconds a child in Sub-Saharan Africa dies from Malaria."

Malaria is a disease caused by the microscopic parasite Plasmodium falciparum, itself carried by the anopheles mosquito. Those bitten by the disease-carrying mosquitoes are at risk of infection. For those living side-by-side with the mosquito, particularly in Africa where the disease is most prevalent, there hasn't been much help dealing with the threat. The most effective means of reducing or eliminating malarial infections has long been known to be the use of DDT, but since DDT was banned by the United States in 1972, it has been difficult, if not impossible, for developing nations in Africa to acquire and use this life-saving chemical. The tide, however, is turning, and renewed spraying of DDT promises to end the malaria nightmare.

Banning DDT

DDT, or Dichloro-diphenyl-trichloroethane, was first discovered in 1874 by German chemist Othmar Zeidler. It wasn't until 1939 that a U.S. scientist, Dr. Paul Muller, independently discovered the compound's efficacy in killing insects. Soon the chemical was employed in the fight against mosquitoes, bed bugs, and damaging agricultural pests. The campaign to rid the world of these pests worked. By 1951 malaria was eliminated as a disease in the United States. Looking back on the previous decades of DDT use, in 1970 a National Academy of Sciences report admitted: "To only a few chemicals does man owe as great a debt as to DDT.... In a little more than two decades [after WW II], DDT has prevented 50 million deaths due to malaria that otherwise would have been inevitable."

Despite DDT's effectiveness in destroying mosquitoes and other disease-carrying insects, environmentalists made DDT a major target throughout the 1960s. Following publication of ecologist Rachel Carson's now-discredited book Silent Spring, environmentalists went on the offensive. They achieved success in 1972 when William Ruckelshaus, the head of the newly formed EPA, banned DDT. The ban came despite the fact that seven months of hearings immediately prior had convinced EPA examiner Edmund Sweeney that there was no need for a ban.

The ban had predictable results. While the rate of malarial infection in the United States remained essentially zero, rates elsewhere shot back up. Following the EPA ban, the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), under threat of a lawsuit from environmental organizations, began working to stop other nations from using DDT. Sri Lanka, for instance, experienced 2.8 million cases of malaria in 1948. More than 7,000 people died from the disease that year. By 1963 DDT use had all but eradicated the malaria scourge in Sri Lanka. That year fewer than 20 people contracted the disease and no one died. But after DDT use was discontinued, rates of malarial infection soared to nearly pre-DDT levels.

Malaria in Africa