Mosquito Revolution, a Dawn on Africa

*As African Countries gears up to eradicate Malaria, what we should expect next?*

In the not too exciting efforts across Africa to eradicate Malaria from sub-continental Africa, we wish to keep the media and the citizens of Africa abreast on the challenges ahead as some committed leaders prepare their boots for show down across the continent to defeat Mosquitoes and thereby eradicate the scourge of Malaria from the African citizenry.

In a Guest Essay by Dr. Williams JR Alexander published by Climate Depot, the learned who is also a UN Scientist has hinted that there has been mounting resistance of African countries to what they perceive to be measures to use climate change to maintain the colonialist master-servant relationship. He went ahead to state that ‘‘they perceive that climate change is intended to suppress the rise to economic competitiveness of the African nations.’’**

‘No African country will dare to impose restrictions which they perceive to be limitations on their development imposed by the Western nations’. He noted.

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Williams mentioned that two important facts are deliberately suppressed by climate alarmists. The first, he claims, is that nearly all African countries are net absorbers of carbon dioxide. This far outweighs their emissions. They should be entitled to financial benefits, not penalties.

The second he describes it to be within his personal sphere of knowledge, He lamented on the Secretary General's erroneous statement that if we fail to act, climate change will intensify droughts and floods, and that water shortages will affect hundreds of millions of people. This statement he said is demonstrably false.

The Scientist continues, ‘‘since the establishment of the IPCC in 1988, there has not been a single loss of life in sub continental Africa due to floods that can be provably attributed to climate change. The same applies to droughts and threats to water supplies. The Secretary General's claim is based solely on theory that completely ignores the natural extremes that have been known since biblical times. The extreme events that were experienced in sub continental Africa prior to 1988 have not been exceeded since then. There is an opposing view propagated by the alarmists. The public have been informed that virtually every serious event is a consequence of climate change. This has already started to backfire. If this is the case, African countries have a right to claim compensation from the developed countries for each event’’.

In an attempt to justify their deliberate current global failed malaria strategies (also an anti-population tool), alarmists have started to blame escalating and worsening death to their so call ‘’global warming’, linking high temperatures to high breed for mosquitoes in the tropics. This is absolutely erroneous and those are consciously forgetting the epidemic of the Arctic Circles in 1920’s.

In the book titled, THE MALARIA CAPERS written in 1991 by a medical entomologist, Robert Desowitz, on page 206 wrote, "in private conversation, colonial and national authorities would voice their concern that effective, widespread malaria control would open the Pandora’s Box of population explosion. In the 1950's "the pill" was not yet available, and many felt that there was no alternative to the cruel culling of 30 to 40 percent of the children by malaria to maintain population, cultural and economic stability in the tropics".

In 2002 and on the eve of the United Nations Earth Summit in Johannesburg, a US environmentalist, Gar Smith in his bid to justify why Africans should remain poor said "there is a lot of quality to be had in poverty," and the introduction of electricity is "destroying" the cultures of the world's poor. Smith further describes developing world's poverty "relative" and explained "you can't really have poverty unless you have wealthy people on the scene. I don't think a lot of electricity is a good thing. It is the fuel that powers a lot of multi-national imagery,"

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Patrick Moore, a pioneer of the environmental movement who left it because he viewed it as too radical, described the anti-electricity views an example of the ‘’eco-imperialism’’ of the upper-middle class in the West who think it’s ‘’neat to have Africans with no electricity’’.**

"What a terrible thing to say. It's just so obviously stupid -- this romanticization of poverty, where people can't afford to fix their teeth, can't afford decent nutrition, can't afford proper health care, can't afford education," stated Moore.

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After the Second World War, the successful use of surplus planes in America to embark on aerial spraying of insecticides to suppress the population of mosquitoes, successfully led to a break down in the transmission cycle. Within 5 years the country was able to declare itself Malaria free. This success and the potency display of DDT led to the launch of the ‘Global’ Malaria Eradication Program that somehow excluded sub-Saharan Africa. Africa was cut off with the excuse that ‘’we are not ready’’, an absolutely absurd sense of judgment on the part of World Health Organization (WHO) when Africans were the hardest hit by the disease. The exercise by WHO however led to the eradication of Malaria from Europe which was declared malaria free by 1975 using DDT.

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After successfully eradicating Malaria from the United States, Canada, Europe and other parts of the world with DDT, the Malthusians kick start an effort to halt the use of DDT in Vector Control in Africa and other hard hit countries. WHO therefore organized a conference in Amsterdam in 1992 and adopted a purported strategy that has four elements:**

· To provide early diagnosis and prompt treatment

· To plan and implement selective and sustainable preventive measures, including vector control

· To detect early, contain or prevent epidemics

· To strengthen local capacities in basic and applied research.

With considerable failure on this scheme, it was re-invented under the name and style of Roll Back Malaria(RBM) in 1998 with the ‘strategies’ of early case detection and prompt treatment, integrated vector management and containment of focal epidemics.

This project has been an abysmal failure with malaria death escalating to over 30% since it inception. In Ghana, it has increased death by over 400%.

While VPWA have asked for the introduction of efficient aerial spraying in Africa to suppress the mosquito population thereby interrupting transmission, some critics with no understanding of our proposed technology and with little research jumped the gun by raising anti-population propaganda including allowing Africans to enjoy the bite of mosquitoes and allow their body system to create immunity to Malaria while a ‘’few’’ children die. To them, maybe 2 persons dying every minute are not significant enough.

Others were more concerned about ‘’bees’’ suggesting that bees will be killed. Though VPWA have not mentioned in our advocacy any insecticide to use, some anti DDT, ill-researched institutions and so called experts quickly mentioned DDT and its presence in food chains when introduced. There were questions of resistance.

These institutions and ‘experts’ have their right to defend their ‘interest’ in the continuous death of African children from the bite of a tiny mosquito while we also have the right to campaign to stop it!

To answer these critics, first, we are not proposing DDT to be used in West Africa due to the politics and threats of powers that be to ban our exports. Secondly, Africans don’t live on trees and we are not going to campaign for forest and farm lands to be sprayed. I guess bees don’t live in people’s homes or they do not fly at night which is the period aerial spraying should take place. The technologies we are proposing dispenses insecticides in tiny, smoke-like particles and therefore do not settle on the ground. There has been field test on some insecticides in use over 50 years now, they have proven resistance free. Aside the use of resistance free insecticides, we are particularly interested in proposing the use of a biological agent known as fungus spore also through an aerial application program.

I wish to advice so called experts to become familiar with current practicable approaches that our continent can use to eradicate malaria rather than sit in their offices and use their 19th century text books to criticize a project they know nothing about while trying to justify their failures.

West Africa’s Malaria can never be eradicated with the cleaning of gutters and spraying of refuse dumps as money is been wasted on now. This should be defined rather as cleaning the environment as opposed to malaria eradication which is a completely different science which current implementers of vector control programs lack. The implementers have underestimated the breeding pools and sheer number of vectors they are trying to control. Ronald Ross’s experiment in Freetown-Sierra Leone in 1899 and JWW Stephens and SR Christopher’s works in Mian Mir in Lahore India in 1901 confirms our assertion.

In the 1940s, Malaria control programs in many countries including Ghana involved treatment of the disease and anti larval measures that included drainage. Ghana passed very strict, even draconian, legislations like the Mosquito Extermination Act to ensure source reduction. These required all householders to prevent mosquito breeding sites by clearing all vegetation surrounding the house to a distance of some metres in all directions. Any container that could possibly hold water and therefore provide a breeding site was to be removed from the household area. Regular inspections were made by the government Sanitation Department (Papa Tankas) in order to ensure that all households were complying with the legislation. Those households that did not comply were subjected to a fine to ensure mosquito breeding sites were destroyed. This was significant but not a mission that could eradicate Malaria in regards to the complexity of breeding fields of mosquitoes in Africa.

We are therefore calling on the media in Africa, particularly, sub-continental Africa to give full support to their governments when they defy the status quo of present global establishments to introduce measures that could help our citizens live free of Malaria.

*Hayford Siaw*

Executive Director- Volunteer Partnerships for West Africa (VPWA)

killmosquito@vpwa.org