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A recent study found that, An anti-worm drug, which makes human blood lethal to mosquitoes, could reduce malaria cases in young children by 20 per cent
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The drug reduced malaria infections from 2.5 cases per child to two and caused no obvious side effects, according to research published in The Lancet journal .
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The drug, ivermectin, has been used for decades to treat parasitic diseases including river blindness and scabies, but could also be used to prevent malaria infections spreading.
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The ivermectin could be a crucial new tool in the battle to eradicate the disease.
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The drug effectively makes a person’s blood lethal to the mosquitoes who bite them, reducing malaria infections by killing the insects themselves.
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When used in combination with other interventions, ivermectin could prevent disease transmission in communities and help to reach malaria elimination.
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Malaria is a life-threatening disease caused by parasites that are transmitted to people through the bites of infected female Anopheles mosquitoes.
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In 2017, there were roughly 219 million malaria cases worldwide (an increase of 3.5 million from 2016), and an estimated 435,000 malaria death
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In 2017, sub-Saharan Africa was home to 90% of malaria cases and 91% of malaria deaths
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More than two thirds (70%) of all malaria deaths occur in children under the age of five.
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Symptoms usually appear 10–15 days after the infective mosquito bite and include fever, headache, chills and vomiting.
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When properly treated, a patient with malaria can expect a complete recovery.
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The sixth edition of the Global Environment Outlook from the UN Environment Programme has come as another stark warning: the world is unsustainably extracting resources and producing unmanageable quantities of waste.
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the linear model of economic growth depends on the extraction of ever-higher quantities of materials, leading to chemicals flowing into air, water and land.
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As a consequence, this causes ill-health and premature mortality, and affects the quality of life, particularly for those unable to insulate themselves from these effects.
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The UN report, GEO-6, on the theme “Healthy Planet, Healthy People,” has some sharp pointers for India.
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It notes that East and South Asia have the highest number of deaths due to air pollution; by one estimate, it killed about 1.24 million in India in 2017.
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It is significant that GEO-6 estimates that the top 10% of populations globally, in terms of wealth, are responsible for 45% of GHG emissions, and the bottom 50% for only 13%.
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As India’s population grows, it must worry that agricultural yields are coming under stress due to increase in average temperature and erratic monsoons.
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The implications of these forecasts for food security and health are all too evident, more so for the 148 million people living in severe weather ‘hotspots’.
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Evidently, the task before India is to recognise the human cost of poorly enforced environment laws and demonstrate the political will necessary to end business-as-usual policies.
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That would mean curbing the use of fossil fuels and toxic chemicals across the spectrum of economic activity.
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There are some targeted interventions that only require the resolve to reduce air and water pollution, and which in turn promise early population-level benefits.
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Aggressive monitoring of air quality in cities through scaled-up facilities would bring about a consensus on cutting emissions of greenhouse gases, and provide the impetus to shift to cleaner sources of energy.
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Pollution impacts are, however, borne more by the poorer citizens. Combating air pollution would, therefore, require all older coal-based power plants in India to conform to emission norms at the earliest, or to be shut down in favour of renewable energy sources.
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Further, transport emissions are a growing source of urban pollution, and a quick transition to green mobility is needed.
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In the case of water, the imperative is to stop the contamination of surface supplies by chemicals, sewage and municipal waste.
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As the leading extractor of groundwater, India needs to make water part of a circular economy in which it is treated as a resource that is recovered, treated and reused.
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Unfortunately, water protection gets low priority, and State governments show no urgency in augmenting rainwater harvesting. New storage areas act as a supply source when monsoons fail, and help manage floods when there is excess rainfall.
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16th MARCH 2019 DAILY CURRENT AFFAIRS