Malaria upsurge stuns officials

Press, 1 September 1982, Page 7

Malaria upsurge stuns officials

Miami Stunned health officials are struggling to cope with a world-wide outbreak of malaria — the debilitating mosquito-borne disease that kills millions of people a year. Malaria still reigns as the principal killer of children and the most widespread communicable disease in the tropical lowlands of Central America, South America, and South-East Asia and the equatorial region of Africa, according to the World Health Organisation. “It is a major tragedy and a public health problem." said Dr Kent Campbell, malaria branch chief at the National Centre for Disease Control in Atlanta. Georgia. “The word ‘shock’ fairly describes the reaction of the world medical community to malaria s continued presence on the scene.” Statistics compiled by the W.H.O. show malaria epidemics in many hot-weather countries now far surpassing some of the record levels reached in the 19605. In India, where 60,000 cases were reported in 1962, the highpoint of the 1960 s outbreaks, officials this year have received reports of four million cases. In Bangladesh, Indo-China. and Pakistan,

health authorities report an alarming revival of the killer disease. In tropical Africa. Asia, and Latin America, about 1.8 billion people are exposed annually to malaria, according to W.H.0., and the disease is fatal to almost two million infants a year in black Africa alone. “In my pessimistic

moments. I tell myself it is a race between us and the mosquito.:” said Dr Carolyn MacLeod. director of Miami's Tropical Medicine and Traveller's Clinic. “The question is. can the disease, and the carrier evolve faster than the means man uses to fight malaria? Sometimes. I think the mosquito and the disease are bound to win." Such gloomy predictions clash with the forecasts by

W.H.O. in 1954. when it declared global war to eradicate a disease as old as tropical civilisation. W.H.O. now estimates new malaria cases at 7.5 million per year, more than double the rate a decade ago. With, lighter budgets and an in-' creased respect for their opponents, public health officials talk now not of eradicating malaria and its carrier mosquito, but only of controlling them.