Malaria is considered by many a thing of the past, or perhaps a disease restricted to the poor countries only, however, the reality of the 20st century showed us differently. We must not forget that in the early 1900s, malaria was a serious problem in the United States and other rich parts of the world, but it has been eliminated by the 1950s. However, the poor countries continue to fight it even now, 50 years later, and the problem is not likely to go away (1 million children die every year of malaria) unless we do something about it.
Without a doubt, malaria has posed numerous challenges over the years. During his speech at the TED conference, Bill Gates tried to answer one question: How do you stop a deadly disease that’s spread by mosquitoes?
As he pointed out, tools that have been used effectively in the past, such as DDT, have now become inefficient, once the mosquitoes, and the malaria parasites, have become resistant to the chemical.
If back in the 1950s and 1960s, DDT was thought to be the most efficient way to keep the mosquitoes away, now a new set of tools need to be developed in order to fight malaria, and the greatest hopes are that an effective vaccine will eventually be created.
The bed nets, which are now widely used in malaria-affected countries, will soon need to be backed up by more efficient tools, including improved drugs, insecticides and hopefully vaccine candidates, Gates also pointed out.
So how do we fight malaria? Gates spoke of 2 choices:
1. If you go in a country with the right tools, in the right way, and you do it vigorously, you can actually get a local eradication
2. Or, you can go in half-heartedly; for a period of time you’ll reduce the disease burden, but eventually those tools will become ineffective and the death rates will soar back up again.
Believe it or not, Gates added, there’s more money out into baldness drugs than money put into malaria, and there’s no reason only poor people should have the experience (during the famous moment when he released mosquitoes in the auditorium).
We have been through this before, we paid attention, then we didn’t pay attention, Gates said. All in all, the new tools under development still don’t give us a roadmap, he explained. We need involvement from scientists, mathematicians, drug companies, politicians, governments and regular people, to get things going. As these elements come together, I’m optimistic that we’ll be able to eradicate malaria, Gates said.
In his annual letter, Gates said one vaccine is already on the way, and will begin its human trials phase this year, before being ready for wide use in 2014. None of these tools is perfect, but we need to understand how to combine them, Gates explained.
