Now that Bill Gates has left Microsoft, perhaps he will move on to something more important. At the philanthropic foundation he and his wife set up, the richest in the world, fighting the scourge of malaria, which Gates has called "the worst thing on the planet", is among the major efforts.
Malaria has been around for a long time. Egyptian mummies show signs of malaria, and ancient Greeks were familiar with it. The true culprit is a mosquito parasite, four varieties of plasmodium. This is a tiny, single-celled organism that is nevertheless much more complicated than a bacterium or virus. Since it has lived in humans and mosquitoes for millennia, and because it breeds fast and is complex, it is very good at out-evolving any of the drugs we can throw at it.
Thus far the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation (BMGF) has focused on Africa, where malaria is almost out of control. It has given over $500 million to initiatives to develop a malaria vaccine and new, effective and cheap drugs, and to make preventive measures widely available — such as mosquito nets and stopping mosquitoes from breeding near humans.
Earlier this week, health minister Anbumani Ramadoss met with Gates and urged him to invest in India as well, especially in programmes to curb infectious diseases like malaria and tuberculosis.
According to the National Vector Borne Disease Control Programme, India had 14,76,562 cases of malaria in 2007, and 1,173 deaths. The bulk of cases were in Orissa, Jharkhand, West Bengal and the north-east, where the worst parasite, Plasmodium falciparum, is most common. This is a great improvement from 1947, when 75 million cases were recorded — yet it is a huge rise from the early 1960s, when an intensive anti-mosquito insecticide-spraying campaign brought the number of cases down astonishingly to just 49,151 in 1961. Worldwide today, there are 500 million cases annually and 1 million deaths, mostly of children.
Experts already know what's needed to defeat malaria: a vaccine, effective drugs and keeping mosquitoes away from humans. But Gates wants total eradication — otherwise, we run the risk of the parasite evolving over time and returning to a vulnerable population that lacks naturally acquired immunity.
It's a respectable goal, but does not seem achievable. Perhaps the BMGF should invest in generating best practice models in India for wiping out mosquitoes in rural and urban areas. If they work, they can then be universalised. |
Content Guide
