DDT

The DDT also known as Dichlorodiphenyltrichloroethane is an insecticide used in

agriculture, however the reputation it has comes from the usage for controlling
mosquito populations, more specifically Anopheles Mosquitoes that are the ones that
carry the illness of Malaria. Its use has been heavily discussed among the higher
representatives of the world due to the impact it has on the environment and
animals, nevertheless the eradication of Malaria will save hundreds of thousands
people per year. Is it worth the risk?

The DDT was in the middle of the 20th century extremely successful thanks to the
fact that the WHO actively recommended its use indoors and how cheap it was in
comparison with other insecticides. Before the 1970s it was the WHO who supported
the idea that DDT wasn’t perjudicial for the environment and it wasn't before 1972
that DDT was banned in the United States, the DDT was suspected of being
cancerous to the human being, later it was banned in 158 countries.

Still countries such as Ethiopia, South Africa, Uganda, Swaziland or india use it
actively for Malaria management. The DDT has effects on: the human being such
as;vomiting, tremors or shakiness, and seizures as the main problem of DDTare the
effects in the nervous systems by interfering with normal nerve impulses, there are
also studies that show liver and reproduction problems in mammals. DDT is
considered a possible human carcinogen but nowadays is not confirmed. Also the
effects in the environment are notorious as for example the effect on the aquatic
environment has been exhaustively studied. DDT has a really low solubility so it has
a greater rate of bioaccumulation in water which makes it a huge threat to aquatic
ecosystems.

As said above DDT has the advantage of being a cheap and fast solution for
reducing Malaria cases is poor countries, poor countries are the ones affected due to
the cost of treatment Malaria has, the cases of Malaria concentrate in Africa, south
America and the South of Asia, this explains why the fact of DDT being so cheap
comes in handy for these kind of countries. It's impossible to study the certain
number of deaths caused by spraying DDT indoors. In the US after DDT was banned
the Malaria was no longer considered endemic and in the last years there have only
been sporadic appearances of the illness making it impossible to count the number
of cases related with this in countries like Ethiopia.

Some alternatives to DDT, taking into account the necessities of poorer countries,
include Insecticide-Treated Bed Nets that consists in a net coated in insecticide that
makes all the insects that stand in the net to get killed while a person or a group of
people is sleeping, and also the IRS or indoor residual spraying that consists in
spraying insecticides in walls or any surface. These methods specially IRS have a
considerably higher cost to apply especially in large spaces such as schools or
offices that because of their dimensions spraying insecticides all over the place will
get too much money spent. Since the Malaria vaccine was introduced and
recommended by the WHO in 2021 almost 2 million children in Ghana were
vaccinated, however the same problem is presented as the pharmaceutical patents
are a cost that these countries struggle to pay.

These are only the preventions of Malaria, there is are actual treatments of malaria
that can treat the patient effectively without any real complications if we don’t take
into account allergies or resistances to medication, however treating it whenever the
patient has been already infected instead of preventing it has an exponential growth
in the cost of the treatment specially taking into account the economic circumstances
the people living in these countries have.

In conclusion the DDT despite being a wonderful solution to Malaria thanks for to the
low cost it has plus how easy is to apply it should be banned due to the not only
affect in the environment but all the problems it can cause to the people using it
including a really big possibility that makes it cancerous for the human being, the
solution for Malaria should be expanding the vaccine to all the countries in necessity
with the help of countries such as the United States and meanwhile that process is
happening to provide the population with alternatives such as Insecticide- Treated
Bed Nets or IRS.

Bibliography:

- https://www.cdc.gov/biomonitoring/DDT_FactSheet.html#:~:text=Following%
20exposure%20to%20high%20doses,to%20U.S.%20and%20International%20a
uthorities.

- https://www.cdc.gov/biomonitoring/pdf/ddt_factsheet.pdf

- https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1570869/

- https://www.who.int/news-room/questions-and-answers/item/malaria?gclid=
CjwKCAiAgeeqBhBAEiwAoDDhnw2iD2YZs_wXXqJqGWhpXfRxVW62rqJ0mWr
0IR0UeyCMhnbGlfc_9hoCeEgQAvD_BwE
-