Meeting The Malaria Menace In S.W. Pacific

Auckland Star, Volume LXXIV, Issue 40, 17 February 1943, Page 2

Meeting The Malaria Menace In S.W. Pacific

A recent article by E. S. Grew, in the Illustrated London News, gives a frank statement on the menace of malaria in the South-west Pacific battle area. The first intimation of the offensive action of malaria was in the Phillipines campaign, for, according to American journalists who were there, the fall of Bataan was definitely hastened by the ravages of malaria among the United States forces, owing mainly to the lack of quinine to counteract it.

By A. W. B. Powell

The Dutch Indies, long the world's chief source of quinine, were quickly denied us as a source of this drug, as also were other vital supplies soon after Japan's entry into the war. Certainly we have conserved our existing stocks of quinine by the general use of synthetic anti-malaria drugs, but so far nothing has emerged that has proven as effective as natural quinine. The special virtue of quinine is the low toxicity to those who take it, and its value, rightly administered in preventing the onset of malaria, and in the treatment of severe cases, is unrivalled. No drug so far discovered can completely replace quinine, for nothing else is so effective against the malaria parasite and its carrier, the Anopheline mosquito. Nearly all the islands from the equator to 20 degrees south, and from New Guinea to 170 degrees <?f longitude east, are subject to malaria infection. This takes in the Solomon Islands, New Hebrides, Admiralty Island, Trobriand Island, New Britain, New Ireland, Santa Cruz Island, and only just misses Fiji. The only islands free from the malaria mosquito in the area are Belep, just north-west of New Caledonia, and a few minute islands, such as Tucopia. New Caledonia was long thought to be immune, but, according to the above quoted article, there is evidence that the country no longer has this complete immunity. Introducing Infection In these days of rapid air transport many dangerous introductions can come about, in spite of rigorous examination. Probaoly no area within the tropics is beyond the reach of infection. Mauritius, Barbados and Reunion enjoyed long immunity, but all three have suffered severe epidemics in the last century. Anopheles punctulatus and Anopheles molluscensis, the two mosquitoes responsible for the spreading of malaria in the South-west Pacific, have larvae so adaptable to every kind of condition that their control is a most difficult business. The larvae do equally well in fresh or salt water, and streams may be stagnant, running, clean or dirty. Formerly it was considered that oil was only efficient in killing mosquito larvae when an unbroken surface film occurred, thus causing suffocation. Modern anti-malaria mixtures of oil and other substances, however, poison, rather than suffocate the larvae and hence are effective in running water also. The building of the Panama canal and the development of the Malayan rubber plantations, were both made possible by the extensive use of antimalaria oils. We are now hampered, however, by the loss of the oilfields of the Dutch Indies, necessitating heavy imports of oil from the United States, which supplies could well be used in a more direct prosecution of the war. Considerable success has been achieved in recent years in Ceylon and India by a system of automatic sluicing of streams. A series of concrete dams are built with a central sluice, which is counter-balanced and tips when a sufficient depth and weight of water collects behind it. The sudden fresh of water scours the stream bed below the dams and washes away the mosquito larvae with it.