Museveni right on DDT use

Feb 15, 2010

<b>Letter of the day</b><br><br>EDITOR—This letter, on behalf of the leadership and members of the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) and its affiliate in Uganda, CORE-Uganda, is to commend President Yoweri Museveni and support his courageous position with regards to the use of DDT to rid Africa

Letter of the day

EDITOR—This letter, on behalf of the leadership and members of the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) and its affiliate in Uganda, CORE-Uganda, is to commend President Yoweri Museveni and support his courageous position with regards to the use of DDT to rid Africa in general and Uganda in particular, of the malaria scourge.

According to a story by Raymond Baguma in The New Vision of February 4, the President “attacked Western countries for campaigning against the use of DDT and threatening to ban imports from countries that spray the pesticide”.

While Baguma’s article does not delineate specific details of his attack, it made reference to a State House press statement in which the President is purported to have questioned why Western countries are campaigning against DDT use in Africa, yet these very countries, including the US, used the same chemical to eliminate mosquitoes in their countries in the past. It is important to note that it was the elimination of the vector (mosquitoes) that led to the complete eradication of malaria from these countries.

If the President did in fact raise that question, we agree with him totally and, we are only a small part of a larger and more qualified group of health professionals, scientists and humanitarians, worldwide, who share his views about the use of DDT.

In September 2006, the World Health Organisation, amid worldwide approval, re-introduced DDT as a first-line intervention into the arsenal in the fight against malaria. DDT was central to the worldwide, United Nations-led campaign that eradicated malaria in the 1950s and 1960s from most of the world, except Africa.

Before Africa could benefit from the campaign, DDT was banned in a politically motivated decision by the then secretary of the interior, William Ruckelshaus, in the Richard M. Nixon administration. Ruckelshaus, ignoring scientific data, instead relied on questionable information from Rachel Carson’s book, Silent Spring, to inform his decision.

In Baguma’s article, references to the large body of data regarding the safety of DDT for human beings and animals and its efficacy as a malarial mosquito killer, is conveniently omitted.

DDT saves lives. In Uganda, where we lose between 320 to 350 lives daily, most being children under the age of five years and pregnant women, we must have an effective life saver, without further delay. We need an intervention that preserves the human assets of this country.

Indoor residual spraying with DDT has been and continues to be the best antidote. If it is combined with other interventions such as wide-scale bed nets usage, followed by administration of effective ACT drugs, malaria could be eliminated as projected by the year 2015.

We applaud the efforts of the United Nations and thank its special envoy for malaria, Ray Chambers, for his contribution towards the global fight against malaria. We are further encouraged by the commitment shown by the African Leaders Malaria Alliance (ALMA) in its first working session in February 2010 in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia.

We implore the President to use his influence in ALMA to have resources directed towards the proven intervention — DDT.

Cyril Boynes, Jr.
director (Emeritus)
international affairs

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