EA - World Malaria Day: Reflecting on Past Victories and Envisioning a Malaria-Free Future by 2ndRichter

Link to original articleWelcome to The Nonlinear Library, where we use Text-to-Speech software to convert the best writing from the Rationalist and EA communities into audio. This is: World Malaria Day: Reflecting on Past Victories and Envisioning a Malaria-Free Future, published by 2ndRichter on April 25, 2023 on The Effective Altruism Forum.World Malaria Day, inaugurated in 2017 by the United Nations World Health Organization, reminds us of malaria’s impact on humanity and the role we can take in preventing the disease. Malaria was only eradicated from areas like Europe as recently as the 1970s, and nearly half of the world’s population was still at risk of malaria in 2021. Over 600,000 people died of malaria in 2021 and 247 million people contracted the disease in 2021—and three-quarters of those deaths were children under five.Almost half of the world’s countries have eradicated malaria since 1945, and we have reason to hope that countries still affected can eradicate it as well. With significant scientific advancements, we know that effective malaria prevention can be impactful and relatively cheap. Typical interventions to prevent and treat malaria include insecticide-treated bednets, removing standing water from affected areas, and antiviral medications—and some of these interventions are relatively cheap. Only $5 USD can provide one malaria net and $7 can protect a child from malaria through malaria chemoprevention. Roughly $5000 USD will provide enough bednets or seasonal medicine doses to save someone's life. Recent advances in vaccines against malaria and in work exploring the use of gene drives provide further hope that we could eradicate malaria from countries that are still affected.On World Malaria Day, we encourage you to donate to Giving What We Can’s fundraiser partnering with the Against Malaria Foundation and the Malaria Consortium. Malaria is preventable and treatable; a lack of resources leaves people personally affected by the disease or affected by the loss of loved ones. Your giving can directly impact the lives of those affected by malaria: if we reached the $1 million USD fundraising goal, we could directly prevent roughly 200 deaths from malaria. Put simply, this is an area where we really can make a difference.Plasmodium falciparum prevalence from 2000 to 2019. The decreasing amount of red, orange, and yellow represents the decreasing prevalence of one of the deadliest strains of malaria due to prevention efforts.Data from, animation idea by Sam Deere.Where we've beenMalaria has been a part of human history for thousands of years, from infections in ancient Rome to the infections of several U.S. presidents. Early treatment for malaria came in the form of quinine from the cinchona tree, first isolated by French chemists in 1820, and was commonly administered in the form of tonic water or the gin and tonic. French surgeon Alphonse Laveran discovered the plasmodium parasite as the cause of malaria in 1880, opening up further research that would identify antimalarials like chloroquine and DDT.Proportion of deaths from malaria to deaths from all causes in the eastern United States, 1870 US Census. From Our World In Data/Statistical Atlas from the 9th Census of the United States 1870 (published 1874).Fighting malaria was the impetus for developing public health infrastructure in a number of countries. The predecessor to the United States Centers for Disease Control was the Office of Malaria Control in War Areas, designed to limit the impact of malaria during World War II around US military bases in the Southern United States (hence its headquarters in Atlanta, Georgia rather than Washington DC).Roughly half of the world’s countries have eliminated malaria in their territories through public health efforts, including some in tropical regions where malaria is most likely to be prevalent. 79 countries eliminated malaria from 1945 to 2010, and several more since 2010. Countries must achieve at least three consecutive y...