Malaria Has Been Eliminated In Europe (qz.com) 126
An anonymous reader writes: Quartz reports that "Malaria cases in Europe have dropped from a peak of over 90,000 in 1995 to zero in 2015, according to the World Health Organization," who calls the "extraordinary but fragile" achievement a step towards eliminating malaria everywhere. Nine European countries had reported malaria cases, but agreed to focus their efforts on a full elimination of the mosquito-borne disease. "The WHO attributes success to improved surveillance systems, better mosquito control, and greater collaboration across borders," reports Quartz, noting it now provides a blueprint for other countries fighting the disease -- and a boost in morale.
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That's not what's happening. I hope you know that and are trying to make some sort of point, as opposed to you weighing in on this discussion without the scantest understanding of it.
Re: Hooray Immigration! (Score:4, Funny)
Okay how's this:
"World's deadliest tropical disease eliminated from entirely non-tropical continent. Scientists claim victory."
Re: Hooray Immigration! (Score:5, Informative)
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Until WWI and partly till WWII the region I live, Karlsruhe, Germany, was Malaria infested. Not sure if the extremely cold winter from 1945 till 1949 had a play in it but meanwhile we have no Malaria since decades.
On the other hand we are doing special anti Mosquito spraying here more or less every year. Simply to keep their numbers down.
Re: Hooray Immigration! (Score:5, Informative)
Malaria used to be widespread in countries like the Netherlands, which is decidedly non-tropical. They managed to eradicate it by treating patients and killing mosquitos using DDT. The reason it's now a "tropical" disease is because tropical countries are poor.
Re: Hooray Immigration! (Score:5, Informative)
For those interested in learning more:
A widespread and potentially lethal human infectious disease, at its peak malaria infested every continent, except Antarctica [wikipedia.org].
The coastal plains of southern Italy fell from international prominence when malaria expanded in the sixteenth century [wikipedia.org]. At roughly the same time, in the coastal marshes of England, mortality from "marsh fever" or "tertian ague" (ague: via French from medieval Latin acuta (febris), acute fever) was comparable to that in sub-Saharan Africa today. William Shakespeare was born at the start of the especially cold period that climatologists call the "Little Ice Age", yet he was aware enough of the ravages of the disease to mention it in eight of his plays.
Malaria was not referenced in the "medical books" of the Mayans or Aztecs. [wikipedia.org] European settlers and their West African slaves likely brought malaria to the Americas in the 16th century.
In 1717, epidemiologist Giovanni Maria Lancisi related the prevalence of malaria in swampy areas to the presence of flies and recommended swamp drainage [wikipedia.org] to prevent it.
Map of Malaria deaths in the USA in 1880: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_malaria#/media/File:AL1887_pg190_Map_Death_from_Malaria_(US,_1880_Census).jpg [wikipedia.org]
In the United States, the National Malaria Eradication Program [wikipedia.org] (NMEP) was launched on 1 July 1947. This federal program — with state and local participation — had succeeded in eradicating malaria in the United States by 1951. Prior to the establishment of the NMEP, malaria had been endemic across much of the United States. By the 1930s, it had become concentrated in 13 southeastern states. (For example, in the Tennessee River Valley it had a prevalence of about 30% in 1933.)
Malaria elimination has already been achieved [wikipedia.org] in most of Europe, North America, Australia, North Africa and the Caribbean, and parts of South America, Asia and Southern Africa, according to the Malaria Elimination Group at UCSF.
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How do you think they finally finished Malaria off? The radical Muslims blew it up.
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Re: The title reads like something out of North K (Score:1)
Tajikistan ?!?!? (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Tajikistan ?!?!? (Score:5, Informative)
Acutally it says European region. Tajikistan was a member of Sovjet but Tajikistan became free in 1991. The country selected to be part of WHO European region as before when part of Sovjet.
So because of historical reason several old Sovjet former republics are now members of WHO European office and not the asian.
Re:Tajikistan ?!?!? (Score:5, Funny)
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Moreover, Russia participates in the Eurovision Song Contest.
Russia can be considered as part of Europe (depending on how you define it...), but Tajikistan is definitely an Asian country.
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So you have no idea how any of this works, and you'd rather spend your time and effort telling everyone that rather than educating yourself. Thanks for clearing that up.
Re:Tajikistan ?!?!? (Score:4, Funny)
Moreover, Russia participates in the Eurovision Song Contest.
I heard somewhere that Australia was going to participate in the Eurovision Song Contest this year, and Israel has won the thing once so that is really not a criteria.
Tajikistan borders on Afghanistan and China - along with some other post-Soviet states - so including it under Europe is just a tiny bit misleading. Most of Turkey is also in Asia.
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I'm pretty sure if it enhanced money making, they would include fucking Fiji in the "Eurovision" contest. And their audience knows less about geography than the show creators care about geography, as paradoxically impossible as that might seem.
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Well, I guess that's one way to get good ratings. Might be hard to get it past the censors, though.
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Zika (Score:3)
Just in time for a new virus - Zika
Medical doctors on the ground fear (Score:3)
Re:Medical doctors on the ground fear (Score:5, Interesting)
that with global warming the malaria mosquito areal will move further to the north.
If developed countries like Australia and Singapore are malaria-free, I don't see how a warmer Europe should have a problem.
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Singapore isn't far enough in the sea to provide an actual protection from malaria. The reason why there is no malaria in Singapore is that it's an urban territory. Malaria doesn't affect big cities as much as rural areas.
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think of the children! (Score:2)
i've been carefully watching my own kids and they have seemed to have lost their fear of nature now that there aren't bugs carrying potentially deadly viruses. it's only a matter of time before they run into the forest to live with the animals and... wait a second... i don't have children! who are these frauds?!
Both malaria and world hunger are beatable (Score:2)
Good riddance (Score:5, Informative)
Even a passing interest in genealogy will teach any European how massively deadly malaria and influenza have been for their grandparents and great-grandparents. Malaria has killed half of every human being ever [blogspot.fr], it used to kill millions out of every generation in Europe even in the XXth century, until large-scale efforts at drying out swamps and massive DDT campaigns successfully curbed mosquito breeding to a point where the parasite couldn't spread and renew its carrier pool anymore.
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It's not just Europe but North America as well. Swamp drying, and pesticide use pushed it or reduced the number of locations where it could breed. Lot of people don't know that half the people who died making the Rideau(Ottawa) Canal were killed by malaria that was back in the 1800's, start digging through death records for the period and you'll start seeing stuff like "xyz person died, suspected lake fever" "swamp fever" "bad swamp/lake air" things like that with a list of symptoms that mirror malaria.
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Malaria has killed half of every human being ever
AFAIK both halves of me are alive.
The role of DDT (Score:5, Informative)
(Not picking on you in particular; it's just that you mention DDT, so this seems like a good place to post.)
For what I can tell, this time round, Malaria was eliminated without a massive DDT campaign (possibly without DDT at all). I can't find a single source on DDT use in this campaign, but here [who.int] is the summary on how Turkey eliminated malaria recently, and it looks like no DDT was used post 2000 (although it was used heavily earlier).
For those who don't know, DDT use in controversial because it is harmful to birds [wikipedia.org] (and is likely a carcinogen, but then again, what isn't a carcinogen?). However, not using it is also controversial because critics say [wikipedia.org] that environmentalist trying to reduce the use of DDT are causing millions of deaths worldwide by prioritizing wildlife over human lives. FWIW, the World Health Orgainzation still supports using DDT to fight malaria, but it also strongly recommends using newer (and likely less environmentally harmful) pesticides.
The pro-DDT critics of envromentalists often miss one big thing, which gets hammered on in the first liked I posted: a lot of mosquito have gained resistance to DDT (and other pesticides). Just like overuse of antibiotics leads to antibiotic-resistant bacteria, so does the overuse of pesticides lead to pesticide-resistant mosquito. The link makes that pretty clear:
By 1999/2000, resistance to 12 insecticides (DDT, dieldrin, malathion, fenitrothion, pirimiphosmethyl, bendiocarb, deltamethrin, permethrin, lambdacyhalothrin, eofenprox, cyfluthrin and propoxur) was reported for specimens of An. sacharovi, in both laboratory cultures and wild-caught mosquitoes collected in the malarious areas of Adana, Adiyaman, Antalya, Aydn, and Mugla in southern Turkey. In Adana, Adiyaman and Antalya, An. sacharovi was susceptible only to malathion and pirimiphos-methyl.
That's kind of scary. It makes it clear that we need a plan B for killing mosquitoes other than wide-spread use of pesticides, because existing pesticides are already loosing their effectiveness. New pesticides will eventually suffer the same fate too.
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Except that DDT was used all over Europe from 1945 until the 1970s and with that you saw a large decrease in Malaria.
Eliminating Malaria didn't start over last week but has been an ongoing task that really got started after WWII.
It is often said that WWII was the first war where more people were killed by weapons than starvation and disease. I do not know now if that is true or not but it was probably the first war where the victors made such a large effort to keep the civilians of the nations that lost ali
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DDT use and manufacture has been banned because it is a "bioaccumulator" (it increases in concentration in predators which eat insects containing sub-lethal doses of it, and increases further in predators which eat those predators ...) ; one effect of this was severe damage to bird populations - particularly raptors.
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I'm going to get modded to hell for this, but I would like to point out what was NOT a significant contributor to the eradication of Malaria: vaccinations.
Once again, sanitation proves to the one of the largest preventers of disease.
But I fully expect the pharmaceutical industry to release a new vaccine and claim responsibility for the eradication of Malaria, just like it did with measles, mumps, and rubella.
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First of all: I hate posts that start with "I will get modded down".
Secondly: you are an idiot.
Thirdly: there is no vaccination against Malaria, and there never will be.
Perhaps morons like you should for funk sake read an wikipedia article about what Malaria actually is.
You cant vaccinationate people against parasites, you only can against virus and bacteria!!!!! Get a damn clue.
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0 cases seems remarkable given that two years ago, the ECDC said that only "99% of malaria cases [in Europe] are travel-related" [twitter.com].
Most of this was a big (relatively speaking) and anomalous spike in Greece.
"For instance, Greece had managed to remain malaria free between 1974 and 2009, but in 2010 three locally acquired malaria cases were reported, followed by 40 in 2011, 20 in 2012 and three in 2013".
http://www.euro.who.int/en/hea... [who.int]
Until the Anti Vaxxers start there.... (Score:2)
Just wait, human stupidity will fix that for you guys.
Why cant we get a vaccine against stupidity? or at least make it so those people can not reproduce?
Climate change (Score:2)
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Climate change is poised to make Europe not at all free of malaria. I hope you were attempting to make some sort of joke at your own expense...
Re:Climate change (Score:4, Funny)
Stupid vaccins... (Score:1)
Better safe than sorry (Score:3)
I'll keep drinking my gin and tonic just in case.
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Hear Hear! To our health!
The Who (Score:2)
The Who attributes success to improved surveillance systems, better mosquito control, and greater collaboration across borders, and wants everyone to know that their next show will be on april 27th in Toronto, Ontario, Canada at the Air Canada Centre. [thewho.com]
Mosquitoes (Score:1)
Mosquitoes should have been eliminated
Re:It will come back, though (Score:5, Informative)
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No, there IS a large reservoir in the Thames Valley. Sorry.
And I never said it was dormant, I said that there was no vector to convert it to humans: mozzies. They need a certain amount of temperature for a minimum period of time for the parasite causing malaria in humans to grow to an infectious host in the mozquito.
The parasite isn't dormant, I never said it was. YOU made that up.
And being +5 doesn't make you right, in case anyone tries that card.
You are factually wrong about how malaria works regardless of your opinion on AGW.
Re:It will come back, though (Score:5, Informative)
No, there IS a large reservoir in the Thames Valley. Sorry.
And I never said it was dormant, I said that there was no vector to convert it to humans: mozzies. They need a certain amount of temperature for a minimum period of time for the parasite causing malaria in humans to grow to an infectious host in the mozquito.
I'm not sure if you're trolling or not, but I'll reply on the off chance you are just misinformed.
Plasomdium spp., the causal agent of malaria, lives in mosquitos and humans. It does not live anywhere else, not in the water or ground or air. It reproduces in humans and is spread to a mosquito when a person is bitten. The parasite is the re-transmitted back to a human when that mosquito bites again. The parasite does not require a certain temperature to grow to be infectious within the mosquito. The ONLY way the malaria parasite can be transmitted to a mosquito is via a human host. If no humans within a region have malaria, then there is no way for malaria transmission to occur, and thus no malaria.
Following on from this, if there is no malaria in humans, the only disease reservoir will be the mosquito. If there is 0 prevalence of malaria within a region for longer than the lifespan of a mosquito (typically ~50 days) the malaria parasite will be eliminated.
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They need a certain amount of temperature for a minimum period of time for the parasite causing malaria in humans to grow to an infectious host in the mozquito.
This is nonsense.
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i think the spread of malaria was mainly stopped by the ridiculously dry years we've had in europe. there were months long periods without proper rain where i live.. last year, i wasn't bitten once. the year before that, maybe 2-3 times. the climate is simply becoming too dry for the mosquitoes to thrive. global warming FTW!
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climate is quite damn important to life. If you don't believe it, try living in a climate like the Antarctic centre, or the middle of the Sahel.
While there is no way to live in the "Antarctic centre" without pretty high levels of life support technology their are many millions of people who live in the Sahel. Maybe you meant to write "Sahara"?
Re:Got to love beancounters (Score:5, Informative)
Nine European countries reported cases in 1995, and zero reported cases in 2015.
Re:Got to love beancounters (Score:4, Insightful)
Even when the sky is mostly clear, some people still gaze sadly at the clouds, waiting for the impending rain.
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In the context of the article 'infected' should be read as 'getting infected' in these countries.
But then your displayed ignorance has probably prevented you from knowing Malaria is not human to human transferable, it requires a specific kind of mosquito to spread.
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I'm not sure how specific you are talking about but it's all females of the Anopheles genus which includes at least 35 different species. Any colored region on this map is a region in which malaria can be spread. http://www.cdc.gov/malaria/ima... [cdc.gov]
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Here you tell us you are a racist and xenophobe, also known as a lack of self-esteem, something that is not helpful for any positive cause.
Racist and xenophobic? Diseases have always spread through large human migrations. As TFS flat-out states, there are regions in the world where these diseases still exist, and people bring disease with them where they go. It can happen with Malaria, it certainly happened to Western Hemisphere civilizations when European colonizers arrived. It's just one of the pitfalls of migration.
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Nobody uses your measure, because it'd make it impossible for people to seek international treatment. Something that's common, and quite safe (even with the Ebola scare in the US, that was a few people who broke protocol making the scare larger than the risk).
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We received a postcard from Malaria that said something along the lines of "Fine, be that way! We're leaving for good!"