Wilson School professor Singer outlines malaria control systems

Its victims suffer from jaundice, anemia, fever and exhaustion. It kills between 1.5 and 3 million people each year in sub-Saharan Africa. And it's all too familiar to Wilson School professor Burton Singer.

Singer has spent almost 30 years studying malaria, raising public awareness about prevention and advocating new methods to reduce its victims.

In August, Singer co-authored an article in Tropical Medicine and International Health magazine titled "The economic payoffs of integrated malaria control in the Zambian copperbelt between 1930 and 1950."

The article depicts a system of successful malaria control implemented in four copper mining communities in Northern Rhodesia (now Zambia) and sustained for 20 years. The program improved water and sanitary conditions, provided health care and ecological control and distributed mosquito nets and house screenings.

Also, the profits of the British mining company in the community increased with the health of its workers. Today, African governments, whether local or national, cannot afford to install health care programs similar to those that were implemented by colonists for economic gain, and pharmaceutical companies do not produce malaria treatment drugs because the clientele cannot afford them.

Singer points out in the article that almost any new drugs produced by independent organizations will be useless within three to five years when used on a large-scale basis, as viruses mutate rapidly and become immune to drugs.

Singer therefore advocates programs similar to those used earlier this century in Zambia, and large companies are stepping in to undertake the role that cannot be fulfilled by impoverished governments. Corporations, such as Exxon Mobil, British Petroleum and even Heineken, are moving into countries in sub-Saharan Africa and working to establish programs that will assist the inhabitants of towns directly impacted by their presence.

"These companies are not altruistic," Singer noted. "No CEO will tell you that they are establishing these programs simply out of generosity. They will not assist any town that is not affected by their business, that does not have residents working for their corporation."

Exxon Mobil is building an oil pipeline stretching through Chad and Cameroon and is putting the inhabitants to work while teaching them disease prevention practices and building hospitals.

Singer is trying to establish a middle ground between control by foreign companies and much needed assistance in Third World countries. By conducting dialogues with different companies and raising public awareness about the gravity of Africa's malaria situation, he said he hopes that a program of control will be established before the continent becomes further entrenched in the disease.