[afro-nets] Super-Resistant Malaria Strains Likely (2)

[Peter Burgess <Profitinafrica@aol.com>]

Super-Resistant Malaria Strains Likely (2)
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Dear Colleagues

My take on this study is that the study team are ignoring the
possibilities of managing the mosquito vector. From what I can
see they have used a model for management of the malaria disease
using medical interventions without taking very much into con-
sideration the re-infection that takes place whenever the mos-
quito vector remains uncontrolled.

Under any model that ignores the vector dimension, there is go-
ing to be re-infection ad infinitum and probably then resistance
build up as the medications have to work over and over again to
do the same work.

I would be very interested to see the same study done making use
of best available practices for mosquito control. The work I
have done building a cost model for this suggests that good mos-
quito control would be lower cost and more effective than the
purely medical interventions that seem to be the fashion cour-
tesy of WHO and the prevailing Roll Back Malaria initiatives.

It has been pointed out by some list members that extrapolating
from the rich NORTH to the poor SOUTH is not appropriate since
the mosquitoes and the malaria parasite are different... but how
different? And where has serious work been done to show that
mosquito control cannot be done in the SOUTH? To my knowledge
hardly any work has been done in decades... and the result is
not good.

My preliminary work suggests that an integrated mosquito / ma-
laria control (IMMC) program would cost less AND save a lot more
lives than the approach under study here. I may be wrong... but
from an accounting point of view an IMMC has the potential to be
the best way to proceed by far.

Sincerely,

Peter Burgess
Tr-Ac-Net in New York
Tel.: +1-212-772 6918
mailto:peterbnyc@gmail.com
The Transparency and Accountability Network
http://tr-ac-net.blogspot.com
http://www.tr-ac--net.org