The proponents of the use of DDT in fighting malaria have not convinced me that this is the time to use the the once banned toxin to be sprayed in people’s houses.
Scholars like Dr. Myers Lugemwa argue that about 40% of the out-patients in Uganda are malaria victims. I do not agree with that because15% of the percentage mentioned by Lugemwa, are common fever patients other than malaria ones.
In Uganda, nearly every fever case is assumed to be malaria. That is wrong. Children between one year and six years in Uganda, predominantly die of malnutrition rather than malaria. No Government official will admit that fact. According to Dr Nsaba Buturo and Dr. Alex Kamugisha, all children around that age die of malaria. Such an analysis is lame and absurd.
When mosquitoes invade a defenceless body, the end result is death. The study I recently carried out in Ankole, Masaka and Kampala reveals a relationship between depleted environments and malaria. In 2003, malaria cases in Nyabushozi, which is environmentally well planned, were much fewer than those associated to Mbarara town in Ankole. In Kampala district, in areas like Kololo and Makerere University with rich forest covers, cases of malaria were far more negligible as compared with cases in Makerere Kivulu and Katwe Kinyoro. The same was true of Rubaga hill compared with Ndeeba and Nalukolongo residential areas.
From a legal point of view, one wonders whether the government has a moral authority to forcibly spray the DDT toxin in people’s homesteads. Several provisions of the constitution as well as the Environment Act 1995 negate the DDT spraying activity. What about the Stockholm protocol which Uganda has signed but has not ratified? As long as we are still benefiting from the global Environment funds, we may not apply the DDT pollutant at will. Even the East African Legislative Assembly in Arusha recently passed a law against the use of persistent organic pollutants like DDT anywhere in East Africa. But in Uganda, anything can happen.
DDT is known to be one of the persistent organic pollutants and has been outlawed since the 1950s. It is a notorious pesticide, persistent in nature and may cause liver cancer, blindness, and brain distress if persistently used.
The Government plans to apply it in people’s houses. If it is not dangerous, why doesn’t Government get it sprayed in the open possibly in the mosquito breeding places? Mosquitoes breed in stagnant water, wetlands, forests and jungles. We have encroached on the environment and that is why malaria is commonplace.
The DDT house-spray has negative effects on humans, domestic animals and foodstuffs. The effects of such a calamity may not be realised now but soon or later they could cause far-reaching deformities in our children. Any clean-up of the DDT related homesteads must affect the water flows in the Nakivubo channel, and hence Lake Victoria. While it may kill mosquitoes, not all mosquitoes cause malaria.
The worst part of the use of DDT is the non-target application, which may indiscriminately affect the ecological balance due to its persistency in soil and living organisms including animals, aquatic lives, fish and humans. The government should know that out of the known 60 species of the anopheles mosquito, about 50 are now resistant to DDT. We can fight malaria without necessarily subjecting the people to toxicity of the pesticide.
The Ugandan farmers stand to lose the export market for their produce if DDT is random applied. The fish exporters, the water packers and beverages will also lose business. On January 25, I intend to lead a demonstration against the use of DDT, in Kampala, and I should not be blamed for that!