Malaria and DDT Essay -- Health Biology Essays

Malaria and DDT Malaria has been a huge problem among many maturation nations over the past century. The amount of people in the entire being that die from malaria each year is between 700,000 and 2.7 million. 75% of these deaths are Afri good deal children (Med. Letter on CDC & FDA, 2001). 90% of the malaria cases in the world are placed in Sub-Saharan Africa. Once again, the majority of these deaths are of children (Randerson, 2002). The numbers call for themselves. Malaria is a huge problem and needs to be dealt with immediately. There charter been many attempts at preventing malaria, no(prenominal) of which gather in been very successful. These have ordinarily involved protecting human beings from mosquitoes, the dreaded carriers of the disease, by eliminating their breeding places. Attempts have been made at destroying larvae as they grow in the water, but none have managed to stop the onslaught of malaria. Recently (before 1999), in some locations, certain(a) drug-resistant strains of malaria such as P. falciparum have arisen. The P. falciparum strain is considered the most lethal family of malaria and can cause neurological damage (Poser, 1999). This presence of strains of malaria that do not respond to conventional drug-treatment poses a new problem for malaria control. The hope is that a malaria vaccine can be developed. However, development of such a vaccine is far off. One possible developer of such a vaccine, Henri Vial of the Montpellier University II in France, has developed a drug that kills the malaria parasite by preventing it from replicating in the red blood cells. However, this drug, called G25, has only been tested on laboratory monkeys and lighten needs to undergo further testing. It is estimate... ...s way into the water where it is absorbed by fish and marine animals. The substance is stored in the fatty tissues of the animal where it waistband until it is needed, like during a sickness or when one is deprived of food. This can cause the immune formation of an animal to respond to disease with less(prenominal) efficiency. Fish such as carp have shown significant immune-system suppression and high levels of pesticide-induced toxicity (Repetto, Baliga, 1996). If birds feed upon these aquatic animals, then they too depart pick up the chemical. The thinning of egg-shells and therefore a decrease in successful births has been linked with exposure to pesticides such as DDT. However, these studies have been through with(p) in the field and therefore the results are uncertain and inaccurate. It is difficult to classify the extent of the chemicals effect on the biological system (Repetto, Baliga, 1996).