PLAN TO END MALARIA

Southland Times, Issue 22132, 28 September 1933, Page 4

PLAN TO END MALARIA

SCIENTIST’S GREAT BATTLE. ONE MILLION LIVES SAVED. As a memorial to his friend, Sir Ronald Ross, a famous British scientist plans to “wipe out” malaria, the dread disease that still claims 2,000,000 victims every year. Sir Malcolm Watson, the scientist, who has already saved one million livqs, is carrying on the work to which Sir Ronald Ross gave his all. Malaria’s annual cost in sickness reaches the colossal sum of £60,000,000, and the health of 40,000,000 people is seriously affected—perhaps for good. “Malaria could be wiped off the face of the earth in a generation and every source of infection utterly destroyed,” said Sir Malcolm recently. “We want new drugs for the treatment of the disease.” Great as was the work of Sir Ronald Ross, who discovered the cause of malaria fever, the work of Sir Malcolm Watson constitutes one of the most brilliant feats ever accomplished by a scientist, says a London writer. Working to exterminate the source of mosquito infection, he has reclaimed 1,000,000 square miles of jungle and swamp. In Malaya a huge swamp which was the cause of countless thousands of deaths was drained, and on its site there stands to-day a magnificent racecourse.

“At present, we are experimenting in India with drugs many times more powerful than quinine," said Sir Malcolm. “On the success of these much will depend, but chemists and doctors are trying to find a drug that will be as safe in the hand of inexperienced people as quinine is, and when we have found this, half the battle will have been won.”