Malaria’s complex lifecycle [1] seems like it would be easy to “break” with different interventions, but we’ve seen historically malaria has been difficult to eradicate. Why is this?
1. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plasmodium#/media/File%3ALif...
Essentially, a lack of access to health care results in Malaria continuing to devastate regions of the world. If you ever want to save a life, donating to the MSF is a great way to do it.
https://www.cdc.gov/malaria/cdc-malaria/index.html
https://www.doctorswithoutborders.org/what-we-do/medical-iss...
It requires more than funding to solve the problem. Sorry that my source is a YouTube video, but https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CGRtyxEpoGg explains a general problem (that of trying to solve problems that are more prevalent elsewhere in the world, from within your own cultural context) and gives malaria as an example. People in malaria-afflicted countries, given free insecticide-treated nets, will often try to use them for fishing - not caring about the effect the insecticide will have on the haul. It's not due to ignorance or a lack of understanding, but due to a value judgment: people who have lived with malaria for generations don't see it as being as big of a problem, while poor people (on a global scale - not like in the US where "the poor" can afford some really impressive things) are always concerned with food supply.
Large-scale medical treatments are always a difficult area, because almost no treatment, or course of action, is risk-free, but malaria was awful when it was more widespread.
Malaria is also dependent on a non-human vector. That means you can target it without requiring peoples' co-operation. Contrast that with e.g. polio where you have to convince people to get vaccinated.
(smallpox instead of malaria; close enough)
Fish. Many species of fish think that mosquito larvae are delicious and will eat them. Some of these species will also thrive even in small bodies of water with little assistance.
Sterile insects. Male mosquitos don’t bite, and females only mate once, so releasing large numbers of sterile males will reduce the population.
Wolbachia. There are bacteria that live in mosquitoes, are quite effective at infecting the next generation, will not infect humans, and prevent malaria from living in the mosquito.
Bti. There’s a species of bacteria that produces a bunch of toxins that are very specific to mosquito larvae. I have no idea why it evolved to do this, but you can buy “mosquito dunks” and commercial preparations that will effectively kill mosquito larvae in water. They’re apparently entirely nontoxic to basically anything else. I expect that they’re too expensive for country-scale control, but they’re great for a backyard puddle.
You can kill mosquito pupae in water by spraying with an oil that makes a surface film for a few days. The pupae suffocate.
https://www.who.int/publications/i/item/9789240031357
It's 40 pages long. To summarize, the three pillars are universal healthcare, identifying the areas where malaria is more/less prevalent/even eradicated, and surveilling eradicated/low transmission areas for new infection.
Insecticides are a part of the "universal healthcare" aspect because vector control is a part of actually preventing malaria. But you can kill mosquitoes with things other than insecticides and mosquitoes in different regions are sometimes immune, which is why it's important to identify specific regions to target for eradication as there's no "one-size fits all" strategy. The paper goes into more detail on page 18 on the various methods of using different insecticides or parasite killing methods. All the methods have to be utilized in concert.
Once a region has eradicated malaria, surveillance is what prevents it from coming back. But it's also necessary as the number of infections go down to spend more resources on trying to find the few that are left.
Interestingly, discrimination plays a role because the last people getting malaria are generally those of very low status that don't get healthcare. If you don't expand healthcare to every single person in a society, malaria will come back.
I'm probably oversimplifying the paper a lot as a non-expert, but it seems the best way to eradicate malaria isn't a magic technological bullet but effective administration and project management using the treatment methods we already have.
pyrethroids (e.g., permethrin),organochlorines (e.g., DDT); carbamates (e.g., bendiocarb); and organophosphates (e.g., malathion)
Pyrethroids are most often in bed nets, insecticide impregnated clothing, etc. How and what to apply these chemicals to is the subject of a lot of ongoing research.
Beyond this, there's just things like finding and eliminating mosquito breeding sites.
WHO declares a nation as a ‘malaria-free’ upon receiving valid proof that the Anopheles mosquito-borne native malaria transmission chain has been broken for at least the previous three years on a national level. A country must also demonstrate the capacity to prevent the re-establishment of transmission.
In June 2024, the WHO confirmed that there was no local transmission of malaria in Egypt, with all identified cases being imported from endemic countries. Egypt’s robust surveillance system was instrumental in early case detection, facilitated by collaboration with relevant stakeholders.
Neighbouring countries to the south have a high risk for malaria, but Egypt has had significant efforts to eliminate the disease since the '40s.
This sounds like HN material on its own.
In the Galilee and around Lake Kinnereth (Sea of Galilee), malaria had decimated the Jewish settlements, with the incidence rate at 95%+ of the workers in 1919.
Sarcasm aside, I love swamps and I hate mosquitoes, other bugs and crocodiles because they don't let me enjoy the swamp. I also don't like cities nor agriculture for the same reason. But I like people and people being happy.
Humanism and environmentalism are at odds more often than they are not.
In any case, I can't elaborate on the things I say without understanding what exactly you take issue with.
Your guesses at my emotional state aren't relevant.
It gets less surprising when people realize that nature is red in tooth and claw, an uncaring shithole we're evolutionary conditioned to find pretty - at least the parts we see. Beautiful meadows and happy animals and careless people are just propaganda - in reality, the people are sick and busy with back-breaking work, and animals are all on the verge of starvation, and that doesn't even touch the microbiological scale. Ecological balance is achieved by means that, when applied to balance between humans, we'd call unending war of attrition.
Humanism and environmentalism are at odds because nature doesn't care about humans anymore than it cares about anything else. Brutal death and constant suffering are hallmarks of nature.
[0]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rideau_Canal#Construction_deat...
_Some_ of the items from last week (each has a paragraph of details):
* India is finally becoming a clean energy superpower
* United States designates a massive new marine sanctuary
* India officially eliminates trachoma as a public health problem
* Global electric vehicle sales soared in September
* Global teen pregnancy rates have dropped by one-third since 2000
(I have no idea why the web site calls it a "self help magazine"; it's just a collection of interesting positive news.)
Not strictly "good news" but tries to be significant news without clickbait.
I already have the "positivity" scores for each article, so I'll add a separate "positive and significant news" page in the coming weeks.
> Certification is granted when a country proves that the transmission chain is interrupted for at least the previous three consecutive years.
And
> To get the WHO certification, a country must demonstrate the capacity to prevent the re-establishment of transmission.
If they've sufficiently damaged the vector one tourist alone cannot bring it back - the disease vector would also need to come back.
So you get rid of mosquitos OR rid of malaria.
So even if you would somehow introduce a few busloads of Malaria-stricken people, that's not likely to re-introduce Malaria.