Sri Lanka, Once Severely Affected By Malaria, Now Absolutely Free Of It (thehindu.com) 30
The World Health Organization has declared Sri Lanka free of malaria, calling it a "remarkable public health achievement" for the Indian Ocean island, which was once the most affected nations in the world. The Hindu reports:Sri Lanka has become malaria-free. On September 5, the World Health Organisation officially recognised this huge public health achievement. The WHO certifies a country so when the chain of local transmission is interrupted for at least three consecutive years; the last reported case was in October 2012. With no local transmission reported, Sri Lanka's priority since October 2012 has been to prevent its return from outside, particularly from malaria-endemic countries such as India. There were 95, 49 and 36 cases reported in 2013, 2014 and 2015 respectively, all contracted outside Sri Lanka. In a commendable initiative, Sri Lanka adopted a two-pronged strategy of targeting both vector and parasite, undertaking active detection of cases and residual parasite carriers by screening populations irrespective of whether malaria symptoms were present.
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Sanitation For The Win (Score:2, Insightful)
So once again, sanitation eliminates disease. Shocking how that works.
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Well Snow was cholera. The US has a long history fighting mosquito-borne diseases going right back to the founding of the nation, although clearly they had no idea of what was going on back then.
The titan of vector borne disease research was Walter Reed -- the guy they named the Army Medical Center for.
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It helps that Malaria has no animal focus other than humans. It means you can focus on places like peoples' homes, where most malaria infections take place.
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Not sure about that as this says: Malaria: affects animals as well as humans - The Science Show - ABC ...
www.abc.net.au/.../malaria-affects-animals.../313...
Australian Broadcasting Corporation
May 16, 2009 - There are over 200 species of malaria. Humans are infected by five. But birds, bats, lizards and antelopes are also hosts for malaria parasites.
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The relevant question is whether human-infecting species can infect animals as well, which it seems they do not. Species of malaria that only infect animals may be biologically related, but are completely irrelevant from a public health standpoint. Eradicate the human-infecting species within the human population, and the human disease is gone. You need not worry about it surviving in other hosts and reinfecting the human population at a later date.
Compare to something like rabies, which can infect many d
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We managed to eliminate Rabies in the British Isles aka UK and Ireland though it was all the UK at the time over 100 years ago.
I fact most of mainland Europe is rabies free, basically the EU/EEA pre 1992. Looks like tackling rabies east of the iron curtain was not a priority.
Anyway given that it can be done it just looks like it takes the appropriate will to do so, which is mostly about the application of money to the problem.
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Rubbish. Monkeys can get malaria, as can many other mammals.
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True, but they get infected by a different species of malaria that doesn't infect humans (usually, though that may be changing), so it's irrelevant from a public health perspective.
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Re: Sanitation For The Win (Score:5, Informative)
By sanitation did you mean intense use of insecticide fogging (that includes spraying indoors), introducing latvicidal fish species on a massive scale, and treating all suspected malaria cases with primaquine?
If you meant that, yes.
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You're under the impression that sanitation equals pristine measures, which isn't the case. Sanitation means cleanliness. Most of the measures undertaken to eliminate Malaria in Sri Lanka involved cleanliness. That's not to say that this form of sanitation is without repercussions (perhaps the sprays cause cancer); but yes, most of the measures described in the article involve sanitation.
Nowhere in the article did it mention Primaquine. But even if the drug was involved, it doesn't detract from the sani
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So once again, sanitation eliminates disease.
This eradication had little to do with "sanitation". There are plenty of diseases spread through poor sanitation, but malaria isn't one of them. It is a vector borne disease spread by mosquitoes. The main strategy was based on identifying, isolating, and treating asymptomatic carriers.
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In the US, seems to have involved mostly draining swamps and eliminating standing water. [cdc.gov]
Sri Lanka also did that, nearly a century ago. But it didn't eliminate the disease. There were still residual malaria cases. Those cases were eliminated by tracking down and treating the individual carriers, especially asymptomatic carriers. That is not "sanitation".
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Not only are you wrong, but your comment reeks of patronising assumed superiority and a little dash of bigotry. Well done.
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Re: Sanitation For The Win (Score:2)
Malaria eradication has nothing to do with sanitation.
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-1 Ignorant
Better Than Florida (Score:1)
We have a few malaria cases every year here. Sri Lanka does not. It's all just too weird. We also have Dengue fever and Zika as well.
Kudos to them (Score:3)
And They Have Cinnamon, Too! (Score:2)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
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great news, but possible dark side (Score:2)
This concern is one of the reasons the DDT campaign to eliminate mosquito vectors in the 1950s was never tried in earnest in Subsaharan A