In the last few decades, malaria, a disease which was almost eradicated from the face of the earth around the 1970’s, boosted to astonishing levels. According to the World Health Organization it causes one death every 30 seconds, 300 to 400 million become infected each year and one or two million of them die, 90 % of which are probably pregnant women and children under the age of five. In Bolivia, one of the poorest countries in the Western Hemisphere, 75 % of the territory is considered endemic for the disease and 40 % of its population is at risk.

How and why did this happen? In 1972, under the banner of environmental protection, the Environmental Protection Agency decided at first to restrict and then to ban DDT, the most effective, long-lasting, and cheapest insecticide available today for mosquito control, although not even one scientific peer-reviewed study has ever proved that indoor DDT spraying may be a health hazard to man or to the environment. Consequently, as from the early 1990s most of the poor developing countries in the Southern Hemisphere have discontinued their spraying programs with DDT and subsequently malaria rates have increased. In South America, only Ecuador increased the use of DDT spraying since 1993 and the rates of malaria in the country decreased 61 %.

Hopefully DDT may be given a second chance soon, since the United States is suffering the consequences of another mosquito-borne disease, the West Nile Virus (WNV).

In severe cases (about 1 % of those infected), WNV causes spinal cord and brain inflammation (encephalitis) and in the worst cases it may lead to death. About 20 % of those exposed to the mosquito-borne virus may develop WN fever, a less severe form of the disease with symptoms such as fever, head and body aches, tiredness and sometimes a rash. No specific vaccines or treatment exist for the disease today and scientists and public health officials in the US have accelerated research on developing tools to prevent and treat WN disease.

In the United States WNV appeared for the first time in 1999 in New York City and this “emergent epidemic disease”, as Julie Gerberding, US Director of the Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) named it, has claimed roughly 18,250 infections and 700 deaths since its first appearance until September 20, 2023 (CDC). (These numbers may be higher since the first symptoms of the disease are very similar to those of respiratory problems of lesser importance which are not declared.)

The rate of WNV infection in the United States has become a health alarm as stated by various media headlines, which has reopened the debate on DDT and other pesticides. Radical environmentalists are obviously battling against any spraying for adult mosquitoes or for other methods to control mosquito breeding and their larvae, with the argument that these methods imperil both public health and wildlife, being more dangerous than the diseases they are meant to control. To avoid mosquito bites authorities suggest that people should stay indoors at dawn and dusk, wear long pants and sleeves, screen windows and doors, remove standing water around dwelling places, use bed nets, and suchlike. These authorities undoubtedly work and live in mosquito-free regions and earn more than one or two dollars a day! One could accept these suggestions for mosquito control in malaria endemic regions if they were offered by those who have at least shared a week in the mud and thatch huts of rural Bolivia, the poorest country in South America, with a poverty index as measured by income of 62.7 %, where 14.4 % of its population lives on less than one dollar a day and 34.3 %, on less than two dollars, where the tropical wetlands are swarmed with mosquitoes, where electricity is non existent and deadly preventable diseases are so frequent.

Surprisingly, DDT and other pesticides have once again come into the debate not because malaria and other mosquito-borne diseases afflict and kill so many in the developing countries, but due to WNV, a disease that afflicted less than 0.036 ‰ of the US population in 2003, the year of its highest incidence. If these were the rates of malaria in Bolivia it would never even consider going back to DDT spraying. Such a low rate of infection would indeed make great headlines, just as it would make great headlines the opposite situation: “The US has 40 % of its population, more than 110 million citizens, at risk of malaria infection, but will not reconsider indoor spraying with DDT!”

* Sylvia Pasquier is biochemist, Founder and President of ICEES in Bolivia (Instituto de Ciencia, Economía, Educación y Salud) and author of the book "Desarrollo Sostenible de la Población: Una Visión Crítica a Comienzos del Siglo XXI".

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