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Combating Malaria
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13324 |
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Section : |
NATURAL SCIENCE
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| Issue
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10 / 1987 |
3,100 Words |
| Author
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Michael Woods
Michael Woods, a contributing editor for THE WORLD & I, has
received numerous science-writing awards. |
Ask someone living in North America or Europe to name the world's most important infectious disease, and the answer will probably include one of several familiar diseases - acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS), the common cold, influenza, pneumonia, polio, tuberculosis.
To most people living in North American or Europe, malaria is little more than a faintly romantic memory, a disease associated with pith-helmeted colonial settlers in India or Africa, or World War II Marines storming steamy jungle islands in the South pacific.
But to almost half the world's population - about two billion people living in more than 100 countries - malaria is anything but a remote and romanticized memory. It is an imminent and ever-present threat that transforms the bite of a mosquito into a potentially catastrophic event that can mean death or years of debilitation. Called "King of Diseases" centuries ago in India and believed by some to be a cause of the decline of ancient Greece and Rome, malaria remains the biggest single killer on earth.
About 200 million cases of malaria - either recurrences or new infections - occur annually and result in incalculable human misery. Malaria will claim an estimated two million lives in 1987. In Africa alone, one million children will die from malaria this year. Malaria has far more subtle effects, as well. J.L. Cloudsley-Thompson, author of the classic volume, Insects and History, cites malaria as "the greatest single factor that, throughout history, has hindered and prevented the social development of tropical and subtropical regions," retarding social, intellectual, and political progress.
But the end of malaria's reign of terror in the tropical and subtropical world may finally be in sight.
After decades of effort to understand, control, and eradicate malaria, scientists have begun what may be the final assault on this ancient scourge. Equipped with powerful new tools of recombinant DNA technology, scientists are developing vaccines with the potential for making malaria a preventable disease. L.J. Bruce-Chwatt, a noted malaria researcher at the Wellcome Tropical Institute in London, cites worldwide agreement among scientists that vaccines offer the most realistic hope for controlling malaria. He characterizes progress toward development of malaria vaccines as "spectacular." Officials of the U.S. Department of State's Agency for International Development (AID), which has been a major sponsor of the
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