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Malaria Has Been Eliminated In Europe (qz.com)
An anonymous reader writes: Quartz reports that "Malaria cases in Europe have dropped from a peak of over 90,000 in 1995 to zero in 2015, according to the World Health Organization," who calls the "extraordinary but fragile" achievement a step towards eliminating malaria everywhere. Nine European countries had reported malaria cases, but agreed to focus their efforts on a full elimination of the mosquito-borne disease. "The WHO attributes success to improved surveillance systems, better mosquito control, and greater collaboration across borders," reports Quartz, noting it now provides a blueprint for other countries fighting the disease -- and a boost in morale.
Nine European countries reported cases in 1995, and zero reported cases in 2015.
Acutally it says European region. Tajikistan was a member of Sovjet but Tajikistan became free in 1991. The country selected to be part of WHO European region as before when part of Sovjet.
So because of historical reason several old Sovjet former republics are now members of WHO European office and not the asian.
Just saying it like it are.
No, there is not a large pool of the malaria parasite in the thames valley. This is a stupid statement. Malaria doesn't lie dormant in the environment, waiting for the right conditions to appear. It can only survive in the host or vector. The only place it can lie 'dormant' is within the human host. Given there have been no cases of malaria transmission in England for a very long time we can safely say that there is no 'large pool of the malaria microbe'. Your statement that winters being too cold to allow mosquito and parasite to mix together clearly indicates you've got no clue what you're talking about. The reason that cold weather prevents malaria is that the adult mosquitos are dead, only the eggs are present (and malaria doesn't live in mosquito eggs). If the adults are dead there are no transmission events because there are no mosquitos around to bite.
Even a passing interest in genealogy will teach any European how massively deadly malaria and influenza have been for their grandparents and great-grandparents. Malaria has killed half of every human being ever, it used to kill millions out of every generation in Europe even in the XXth century, until large-scale efforts at drying out swamps and massive DDT campaigns successfully curbed mosquito breeding to a point where the parasite couldn't spread and renew its carrier pool anymore.
Maybe we deserve this world ?
No, there IS a large reservoir in the Thames Valley. Sorry.
And I never said it was dormant, I said that there was no vector to convert it to humans: mozzies. They need a certain amount of temperature for a minimum period of time for the parasite causing malaria in humans to grow to an infectious host in the mozquito.
I'm not sure if you're trolling or not, but I'll reply on the off chance you are just misinformed.
Plasomdium spp., the causal agent of malaria, lives in mosquitos and humans. It does not live anywhere else, not in the water or ground or air. It reproduces in humans and is spread to a mosquito when a person is bitten. The parasite is the re-transmitted back to a human when that mosquito bites again. The parasite does not require a certain temperature to grow to be infectious within the mosquito. The ONLY way the malaria parasite can be transmitted to a mosquito is via a human host. If no humans within a region have malaria, then there is no way for malaria transmission to occur, and thus no malaria.
Following on from this, if there is no malaria in humans, the only disease reservoir will be the mosquito. If there is 0 prevalence of malaria within a region for longer than the lifespan of a mosquito (typically ~50 days) the malaria parasite will be eliminated.
(Not picking on you in particular; it's just that you mention DDT, so this seems like a good place to post.)
For what I can tell, this time round, Malaria was eliminated without a massive DDT campaign (possibly without DDT at all). I can't find a single source on DDT use in this campaign, but here is the summary on how Turkey eliminated malaria recently, and it looks like no DDT was used post 2000 (although it was used heavily earlier).
For those who don't know, DDT use in controversial because it is harmful to birds (and is likely a carcinogen, but then again, what isn't a carcinogen?). However, not using it is also controversial because critics say that environmentalist trying to reduce the use of DDT are causing millions of deaths worldwide by prioritizing wildlife over human lives. FWIW, the World Health Orgainzation still supports using DDT to fight malaria, but it also strongly recommends using newer (and likely less environmentally harmful) pesticides.
The pro-DDT critics of envromentalists often miss one big thing, which gets hammered on in the first liked I posted: a lot of mosquito have gained resistance to DDT (and other pesticides). Just like overuse of antibiotics leads to antibiotic-resistant bacteria, so does the overuse of pesticides lead to pesticide-resistant mosquito. The link makes that pretty clear:
By 1999/2000, resistance to 12 insecticides (DDT, dieldrin, malathion, fenitrothion, pirimiphosmethyl, bendiocarb, deltamethrin, permethrin, lambdacyhalothrin, eofenprox, cyfluthrin and propoxur) was reported for specimens of An. sacharovi, in both laboratory cultures and wild-caught mosquitoes collected in the malarious areas of Adana, Adiyaman, Antalya, Aydn, and Mugla in southern Turkey. In Adana, Adiyaman and Antalya, An. sacharovi was susceptible only to malathion and pirimiphos-methyl.
That's kind of scary. It makes it clear that we need a plan B for killing mosquitoes other than wide-spread use of pesticides, because existing pesticides are already loosing their effectiveness. New pesticides will eventually suffer the same fate too.
Malaria isn't just a tropical disease. When I lived in Ottawa (most definitely not tropical), I went by the cemetery to those who built the Rideau canal, approximately 1000 people died building it, half of those from malaria. In 1830 one section of the canal had almost 800 cases of malaria out of 1300 workers. We just DDTed the hell out of everything in the 50's and 60's and pretty much wiped out malaria in North America
Malaria used to be widespread in countries like the Netherlands, which is decidedly non-tropical. They managed to eradicate it by treating patients and killing mosquitos using DDT. The reason it's now a "tropical" disease is because tropical countries are poor.
For those interested in learning more:
A widespread and potentially lethal human infectious disease, at its peak malaria infested every continent, except Antarctica.
The coastal plains of southern Italy fell from international prominence when malaria expanded in the sixteenth century. At roughly the same time, in the coastal marshes of England, mortality from "marsh fever" or "tertian ague" (ague: via French from medieval Latin acuta (febris), acute fever) was comparable to that in sub-Saharan Africa today. William Shakespeare was born at the start of the especially cold period that climatologists call the "Little Ice Age", yet he was aware enough of the ravages of the disease to mention it in eight of his plays.
Malaria was not referenced in the "medical books" of the Mayans or Aztecs. European settlers and their West African slaves likely brought malaria to the Americas in the 16th century.
In 1717, epidemiologist Giovanni Maria Lancisi related the prevalence of malaria in swampy areas to the presence of flies and recommended swamp drainage to prevent it.
Map of Malaria deaths in the USA in 1880: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_malaria#/media/File:AL1887_pg190_Map_Death_from_Malaria_(US,_1880_Census).jpg
In the United States, the National Malaria Eradication Program (NMEP) was launched on 1 July 1947. This federal program — with state and local participation — had succeeded in eradicating malaria in the United States by 1951. Prior to the establishment of the NMEP, malaria had been endemic across much of the United States. By the 1930s, it had become concentrated in 13 southeastern states. (For example, in the Tennessee River Valley it had a prevalence of about 30% in 1933.)
Malaria elimination has already been achieved in most of Europe, North America, Australia, North Africa and the Caribbean, and parts of South America, Asia and Southern Africa, according to the Malaria Elimination Group at UCSF.