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Egypt declared malaria-free after 100-year effort

(www.bbc.com)
635 points thunderbong | 9 comments | 21 Oct 24 12:51 UTC | HN request time: 0.929s | source | bottom
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lysozyme ◴[21 Oct 24 18:02 UTC] No.41906666[source]▶
It’s interesting how Egypt’s efforts to monitor and test for malaria contributed to this accomplishment. It underscores how eradicating many infectious diseases will require a deep understanding not only of the disease itself, but also the cycles of transmission and the complex ecology of different hosts.

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...

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foxyv ◴[21 Oct 24 19:14 UTC] No.41907383[source]▶
I think the greatest challenge with eradicating Malaria is that it is most prevalent in impoverished regions of the world. The USA occasionally has incursions of Malaria which is quickly quashed by the CDC National Malaria Surveillance System. If you have enough funding, Malaria is preventable. However, if most people do not have access to medical care, they cannot be diagnosed or tracked.

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...

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1. Fomite ◴[21 Oct 24 19:51 UTC] No.41907831[source]▶
This. That malaria is not prevalent in the Southern U.S. (there's a reason the CDC is in Atlanta) is as much an economic choice as an epidemiological success story.
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2. te_chris ◴[21 Oct 24 20:55 UTC] No.41908435[source]▶
I heard an urban legend that the original eradication was basically carpet bombing the south with DDT back before we knew better.
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3. dragonwriter ◴[21 Oct 24 21:03 UTC] No.41908507[source]▶
"Carpet bombing" is perhaps a hyperbolic term, but widespread application of DDT in the southeastern US was, in fact, a central component of the effort.

https://stacks.cdc.gov/view/cdc/100616/cdc_100616_DS1.pdf

4. anitil ◴[21 Oct 24 23:54 UTC] No.41909781[source]▶
I believe now they use sterile mosquito larva to achieve the same now [0], though it's from a youtube video so I'm not sure how much to trust it.

[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Olj8arvfYj4

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5. CJefferson ◴[22 Oct 24 03:38 UTC] No.41910973[source]▶
It's very possible getting rid of malaria made this was a worthwhile, even given our modern knowledge, given the treatment options available at the time.

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.

6. Fomite ◴[22 Oct 24 03:55 UTC] No.41911044[source]▶
Not really an urban legend.
7. tomjen3 ◴[22 Oct 24 13:52 UTC] No.41914277[source]▶
Its not really that we know better. We known more and we know there is more of a trade of than was assumed then.

But to know better would mean we would have done anything different back then. If the choice is a silent spring (hyperpole, but okay) or dead babies from malaria in the US, no politician is going to align with the "I support dead babies party" and nobody is going to listen to those who do.

8. dennis_jeeves2 ◴[22 Oct 24 17:26 UTC] No.41916525[source]▶
Until they banned DDT ostensibly because it was a threat to 'wild life'. I'm sure it affected people very adversely (it's rumored that DDT was one of the major causes of polio). Right now there will be chemicals which are widely used which fall in the same league.
9. foxyv ◴[22 Oct 24 17:46 UTC] No.41916763{3}[source]▶
It's such a neat method because it is so inexpensive too. You take a bunch of mosquitos, irradiate them with just the right dose at the right time and then release them en-masse.

https://www.cdc.gov/mosquitoes/mosquito-control/irradiated-m....