DDT is not harmful, as some people say
SIR— I am once again compelled to react to proponents of the Anti-DDT in-door Residue Spray in Malaria Control after trouncing some of those who dared come for a public debate at the Uganda Management Institute on January 25.
SIR— I am once again compelled to react to proponents of the Anti-DDT in-door Residue Spray in Malaria Control after trouncing some of those who dared come for a public debate at the Uganda Management Institute on January 25.
Unfortunately, those who have continued to write about the insecticide did not come to attend this academic presentation in which none other than Mr Ken Lukyamuzi, the Rubaga South MP and and anti-DDT agitator was a discussant of presented papers that exonerated DDT as being carcinogenic, causing impotence and infertility among other things. Clinical and laboratory-based evidence was adduced to exonerate the pesticide both locally and at international level.
Specifically, I will point out the following as being still uninformed as far as DDT use was in Uganda in the 50s and 60s, is in some countries like South Africa, Botswana, Egypt, Ecuador, etc, which countries are far economically more developed than our banana republic. These people include Mr Oweyegha Afunadula and Margaret Atim.
You may recall that in 2001, Mr Afunadula tried to demagogue the Immunisation Programme on Polio saying that the vaccines contained HIV, a claim for which he had absolutely no scientific proof. To date, polio is almost no more in Uganda after using what the said Afunadula had decampaigned.
The persistence in the environment, animal or plant lie he puts on DDT is as harmless as one may have a particle of sand we eat in our food accidentally or a bullet pellet that we may not be able to remove from one’s body during surgical procedures and we leave them as ‘harmless’ foreign bodies all our lifetime.
I am even shocked to see Atim putting our produce before human life! This is murder afore-thought!
The threat of EU not buying our products is hot air.
In the 1950s and 1960s, the Nile Perch was introduced in Lake Victoria and Lake Albert soon after spraying most parts in Uganda. However, the EU and other countries have continued to buy our fish, coffee, flowers, tea etc. In any case, the same countries are buying from South Africa, Egypt, which countries have or are using DDT.
Shoprite’s fruits and juices for that matter contain DDT since the country where they are imported from use the dreaded insecticide.
I have not put in oblivion, Ken Lukyamuzi who demonstrated on the January 28 with poor wananchi whose blood forms the daily meal for mosquitoes every night.
But to allay the fears of those against DDT, I wish to inform them that the Ministry of Health will follow the guidelines of the Stockholm Convention and WHO on DDT use, just like other countries have done. The fishes, agricultural produce or even flowers that are talked about never grow on walls where DDT is to be sprayed using the Indoor Residue Spray.
I pray that Ugandans stop this DDT subterfuge to save the 400 persons that die everyday from the malady.
Dr Myers Lugemwa
Proponent of DDT Use
Unfortunately, those who have continued to write about the insecticide did not come to attend this academic presentation in which none other than Mr Ken Lukyamuzi, the Rubaga South MP and and anti-DDT agitator was a discussant of presented papers that exonerated DDT as being carcinogenic, causing impotence and infertility among other things. Clinical and laboratory-based evidence was adduced to exonerate the pesticide both locally and at international level.
Specifically, I will point out the following as being still uninformed as far as DDT use was in Uganda in the 50s and 60s, is in some countries like South Africa, Botswana, Egypt, Ecuador, etc, which countries are far economically more developed than our banana republic. These people include Mr Oweyegha Afunadula and Margaret Atim.
You may recall that in 2001, Mr Afunadula tried to demagogue the Immunisation Programme on Polio saying that the vaccines contained HIV, a claim for which he had absolutely no scientific proof. To date, polio is almost no more in Uganda after using what the said Afunadula had decampaigned.
The persistence in the environment, animal or plant lie he puts on DDT is as harmless as one may have a particle of sand we eat in our food accidentally or a bullet pellet that we may not be able to remove from one’s body during surgical procedures and we leave them as ‘harmless’ foreign bodies all our lifetime.
I am even shocked to see Atim putting our produce before human life! This is murder afore-thought!
The threat of EU not buying our products is hot air.
In the 1950s and 1960s, the Nile Perch was introduced in Lake Victoria and Lake Albert soon after spraying most parts in Uganda. However, the EU and other countries have continued to buy our fish, coffee, flowers, tea etc. In any case, the same countries are buying from South Africa, Egypt, which countries have or are using DDT.
Shoprite’s fruits and juices for that matter contain DDT since the country where they are imported from use the dreaded insecticide.
I have not put in oblivion, Ken Lukyamuzi who demonstrated on the January 28 with poor wananchi whose blood forms the daily meal for mosquitoes every night.
But to allay the fears of those against DDT, I wish to inform them that the Ministry of Health will follow the guidelines of the Stockholm Convention and WHO on DDT use, just like other countries have done. The fishes, agricultural produce or even flowers that are talked about never grow on walls where DDT is to be sprayed using the Indoor Residue Spray.
I pray that Ugandans stop this DDT subterfuge to save the 400 persons that die everyday from the malady.
Dr Myers Lugemwa
Proponent of DDT Use