By Dominic Lawson
About a million people a year in Africa die of malaria - entirely avoidably. Multiply that by 35, which is the number of years well-funded lobbying organisations have spread lies, and the body count, mostly children, becomes too many to comprehend.
But last week, the World Health Organisation finally shook off the malign grip exercised by their campaign of misinformation: the new head of the WHO's anti-malarial programme, Arata Kochi, declared that the organisation would promote the use of indoor spraying with DDT, the insecticide which had wiped out malaria in the developed world, but which was banned before sub-Saharan Africa could benefit in the same way.
Continues Below ↓
It was largely the pressure exercised by well-organised multinational lobbyists such as Greenpeace that persuaded the governments of the United States and Europe to refuse to sanction the use of DDT to combat the scourge of malaria in Africa.
There had been some evidence that intensive crop-spraying with DDT in the 1960s had caused a drop of about 10 percent in the thickness of the eggshells of some local breeds of birds. And that was it. The environmentalist lobby groups tried, rather successfully, to spread the myth that the insecticide, which is no more carcinogenic than coffee, could cause cancer.
As a result, the EU threatened to ban food imports from African countries which had the temerity to advocate DDT in the battle to save children. In effect, the West had put its own neurosis over trace chemicals in food over the lives and welfare of the entire African continent.
Last week, Kochi, who worked for 30 years in an effort to stamp out TB, implored the green lobby: "I am here to ask you, please help save African babies as you are helping to save the environment. African babies do not have a powerful movement to champion their wellbeing."
The only response of the green lobby groups was an embarrassed silence.
Continues...
|
StumbleUpon
Reddit
Digg
Delicious
Newsvine
Facebook
muti
Twitter
