WHO recommends DDT
TEXT OF STORY
BRIAN WATT: Remember DDT, the pesticide that was banned in the U.S. in 1972? Well today, the World Health Organization is set to recommend that DDT be used in Africa as part of the battle against Malaria. But as Nancy Marshall Genzer reports, some Africans are saying, thanks but no thanks.
NANCY MARSHALL GENZER: The WHO is expected to recommend that DDT be sprayed inside people’s homes to protect them from malaria-carrying mosquitoes while they sleep.
The organization is not recommending that DDT be sprayed outside where it could leech into the environment. Still, Nii Akueteh with Transafrica Forum says African farmers worry their crops might be rejected by buyers afraid of DDT contamination.
NII AKUETEH:“One area of great concern is what is defined as organic, how much residue can be on their produce.”
But Nastasha Bilimoria, of Friends of the Global Fight Against AIDS, TB and Malaria says the cost of not preventing malaria outweighs the farmers’ concerns.
NASTASHA BILIMORIA:“Malaria is so harmful in Africa it actually leads to $12 billion in lost GDP each year alone.”
Bilimoria says a million people die of malaria every year — almost all of them children.
In Washington, I’m Nancy Marshall Genzer for Marketplace.
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