The House who noted that malaria is a major health challenge which puts enormous pressure on the nation's overstretched health system, said about 300,000 people die of malaria annually with 65 per cent of these deaths being children under the age of 5, while the yearly economic loss to the disease is put at N480 billion. Positing that malaria is a disease that can be eradicated successfully using DDT, Hon. Christopher Agibe informed the House that during the World Health Organisation (WHO) Global Malaria Eradication programme between 1959 and 1969, DDT was successfully used to permanently eliminate malaria in many regions like southern Europe, North America, some parts of Asia as well as the Caribbean.

He also disclosed that while the United States of America and some European countries have used DDT to control the breeding of mosquitoes, South Africa, Kenya, Zambia, Uganda and Zimbabwe have recently used DDT to great effects, with some of them reducing the disease by as much as 90%.

The House who acknowledged that the use of DDT to control the breeding of mosquitoes is enmeshed in controversy over its unproven adverse effects on the environment, thus leading to its ban in 2004 by the Stockholm Convention on Persistent Organic Pollutants, however, said that in 2006,the same convention permitted the use of DDT for the control of mosquitoes.

The lawmaker berated the discouragement of the use of DDT by developing nations through the denial of health sector funding by World Bank.

Source: Leadership Onlinne