Push to fund DDT in fight against malaria in Africa

In the battle against one of Africa's deadliest diseases, some countries are fighting without their most potent weapon.

That's because the weapon, DDT, or dichloro-diphenyl-trichloromethylmethane, is also one of the most controversial. Western donors, the United Nations, and environmental groups acknowledge the pesticide's effectiveness in combating mosquito-borne diseases - it has been shown to reduce malaria by up to 90 percent. But they are wary of the chemical, whose widespread use was once said to cause cancer and blamed for environmental damage, such as the thinning of eggshells of the California condor.

Now, even as wealthy nations approve aid for Africa to fight malaria, critics say that by not explicitly authorizing the use of DDT, Western environmental standards are being applied to the developing world, where long-term, often unproven, risks take precedence over immediate needs - at a cost of thousands of lives.

"It's ecoimperialism," says Richard Tren, head of Africa Fighting Malaria, an independent organization which advocates the use of DDT. "DDT is not permitted in Sweden. Well, that's well and good. But you're not going to die of malaria in Sweden."

While the world has focused on Africa's AIDS problem, the ongoing crisis of malaria has largely faded into the background. The UN's new Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis, and Malaria, and America's $15 billion pledge to fight infectious diseases, which was signed on Tuesday by President Bush, are intended to help poor nations combat malaria as well as AIDS.

But because most of the countries fighting malaria are among the world's poorest, campaigners like Mr. Tren say little progress will be made against the disease until rich countries start funding DDT spraying programs.

Malaria is the single biggest cause of death among children worldwide, and the United Nations estimates that at least 1 million people die of the disease each year, 90 percent of them in sub-Saharan Africa. The disease places an enormous burden on the healthcare systems of poor countries and is considered a major factor in their slow economic development.

After its invention in 1937, DDT was considered a miracle chemical and garnered its developer, Swiss chemist Paul Hermann Müller, the Nobel Prize. Praised for its effectiveness and longevity, the insecticide was widely used in agriculture and for mosquito control, and is credited with helping eradicate malaria in Western Europe and the North America.

But the publication of Rachel Carson's book "Silent Spring" in 1962 changed the image of DDT from miracle into poison. In the years that followed, DDT was banned in most developed nations and production was largely halted.

Ceding to pressure from donor nations and international organizations, many developing countries, which had long used DDT to control malaria, eventually stopped. Here in South Africa, the effects were deadly.

In 1995, the last year South Africa had a comprehensive DDT program, there were only 6,000 malaria cases in the country. According to South Africa's Department of Health, by 2000, resistance had developed to the compound that had replaced DDT and that number had risen to 60,000. Worried by these figures, South Africa again began using DDT in 2001. By 2002, cases had again fallen to 15,000. In Zambia, spraying by mining companies has been even more successful, reducing malaria cases by as much as 90 percent.

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