Figure 1.--The photo was taken in Sardinia during the 1950s. Father and son are loading some drums of dichlorodiphenyltrichloroethane (DDT) on a donkey. Malaria was still endemic in Sardinia at the time. The large scale use of DDT and other measures eradicated the anopheles mosquitoes on Sardunia. This akso occured in other areas of Italy like the Pontine Marshes south of Rome, an area which had no been seveloped since Roman times because of malaria. At the time of extensive malaria spraying, it was not known how dangerous DDT was.
Malaria is a mosquito-borne disease which transmit the pathogen parasite. The vector is the female Anopheles mosquito. .The symtoms are fever, chills, and other flu-like medical problems. If untreated like flu, infected individuals can develop severe complications leading to death. Malaria continues to be a very serious medical problem. The WHO reports an estimated 229 million people contracted malaria occurred worldwide and 0.4 million died, primarily children in Africa. Malarian in America and Europe is rare. The 2,000 cases of malaria are diagnosed in the United States annually are mostly traceable to travelers and immigrants returning from countries where malaria is still common, mostly Sub-Saharan Africa--95 percent of the modern cases and deaths occur there. There remainder is mostly South Asia. These are tropical areas which provide ideal breeding grounds for mosquitos. Malaria was a widespraead amcient didease. Historians have found references to what sounds like malaria almost as soon as writing was developed (Mesopotamia, Egypt, and China). We do not know about the Indus Valley civilization because so little written material has been found and what has been found has not been deciphered. There are no references to malaria in the pre-Colombian America. And the Amer-Indian peoples who settled the Americas came from a Siberian population probably unaffected by malaria. It is believed that malaria was introduced as a result of the Conquest. The most likely population introducing disease to the Americas were the enslaved Africans from areas that malaria was endemic. The reference in classical Greece and Rome are much clearer. Not only are there no doubts that they refer to malaria, but the connections with swamps was understood, but not the connection with mosquitos. This did not come until the modern era and the development of modern science, specifcally the grerm theory of disease. Malaria has had historical impacts. Malaria and Yellow Fever were major reasons the French effort to build the Pananama Canal failed. Soldiers in the Pacific War were particularly affected because if the jungle enviroment of many South Pacific islandswhere the early battles of the Pacific War were fought. The U.S. Army believes that the poor performance of the American and Filipoino soldiers when the Japanese invaded (December 1942) was in part realted to the large number if sdoldiers affected by malaria. The invading Japanese were relatively inaffected. As the war progressed, this dynamic reversed. It was the Japanese who were present in theater and heacily affected an the American invaders who were less affected. [U.S. Army Heritage Center Foundation] In additioin the better fed American troops with more access to medical treatment were better able to survive the dissease. Malaria is both preventable and curable. The current problem in Africa is the limited health care system of many countries.
Sources
U.S. Army Heritage Center Foundation. "Malaria in World War II".
