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  BBC 15 Sep 06
WHO backs DDT for malaria control

Yahoo News 15 Sep 06
World Health Org. clears DDT spraying for malaria
By Deborah Zabarenko, Environment Correspondent

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - DDT, the long-banned insecticide blamed for killing birds and other wildlife, is now approved for use indoors to fight malaria, the World Health Organization announced on Friday.

"One of the best tools we have against malaria is indoor residual house spraying," said Dr. Arata Kochi, director of the World Health Organization (WHO) malaria department.

"Of the dozen pesticides WHO has approved as safe for house spraying, the most effective is DDT."

For about $5 per house, indoor spraying with DDT is a cost-effective response to malaria, which kills about a million people annually, most of them children under five.

In parts of Africa and Asia where malaria-carrying mosquitoes spread the disease, 85 percent of home dwellers approached by health workers allow their houses to be sprayed, global health officials said at a news conference.

DDT came into common use in the 1930s as an agricultural insecticide. It became notorious after biologist and ecologist Rachel Carson's 1962 book "Silent Spring" exposed how DDT entered the food chain, killing wildlife and threatening humans.

In 1969, the National Cancer Institute announced findings that DDT could cause cancer, and a U.S. federal ban was imposed in 1972.

Richard Tren, director of the group Africa Fighting Malaria, stressed the difference between agricultural DDT sprayed outdoors and the residual spraying meant to act like a giant mosquito net over individual houses.

"The environmental impact associated with spraying insecticides -- whether it's DDT or other insecticides -- indoors is minimal, it's negligible ... This is as unrelated to 'Silent Spring' as anything," Tren said. "The science is very clear that there are no harmful human effects."

Tren said environmental groups in Africa support its use.

In Washington, the director of the Sierra Club's environmental quality program gave muted backing to the plan. "Reluctantly, we do support it," said the group's Ed Hopkins. "Malaria kills millions of people and when there are no other alternatives to indoor use of DDT, and where that use will be well-monitored and controlled, we support it."

Hopkins stressed the need for safer alternatives to DDT, "because DDT is not a silver bullet to solve this problem."

BBC 15 Sep 06
WHO backs DDT for malaria control

The World Health Organization (WHO) has reversed a 30-year policy by endorsing the use of DDT for malaria control. The chemical is sprayed inside houses to kill malaria-carrying mosquitoes.

DDT has been banned globally for every use except fighting disease because of its environmental impacts and fears for human health.

WHO says there is no health risk, and DDT should rank with bednets and drugs as a tool for combating malaria, which kills more than one million each year. "The scientific and programmatic evidence clearly supports this reassessment," said Dr Anarfi Asamoa-Baah, WHO assistant director-general for HIV/AIDS, TB and Malaria.

"Indoor residual spraying is useful to quickly reduce the number of infections caused by malaria-carrying mosquitoes; it has proven to be just as cost effective as other malaria prevention measures, and DDT presents no health risk when used properly."

Teams of sprayers typically visit endemic areas once a year, spraying the chemical on the inside walls of houses; mosquitoes landing there absorb it and die.

Global ban

A potent insecticide, DDT fell into disrepute with the publication of Rachel Carson's Silent Spring just over 40 years ago. The book showed that widespread, indiscriminate use of DDT and related compounds was killing wildlife over vast tracts of North America and western Europe.

A number of countries banned it, and in 2004 the global treaty on Persistent Organic Pollutants (POPs) made the prohibition global - except for a clause allowing its manufacture and use in disease control.

Some African countries have continued to use it, though most have either switched to other kinds of insecticide or pursued a strategy of issuing insecticide-impregnated bednets.

Some aid agencies have policies of not funding programmes involving DDT. South Africa was one country that switched, but it had to return to DDT at the beginning of the decade after mosquitoes developed resistance to the substitute compounds.

"Of the dozen insecticides WHO has approved as safe for house spraying, the most effective is DDT," said Arata Kochi, director of the WHO's Global Malaria Programme. Richard Tren of the pressure group Africa Fighting Malaria has been campaigning for DDT's rehabilitation.

"All development agencies and endemic countries need to act in accordance with WHO's position on the use of DDT for indoor residual spraying," he said.
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