Throughout his February Africa tour, President Bush reaffirmed his support for the programs promoted by the United Nations, World Health Organization, and World Bank that are responsible for tens of millions of people being infected by malaria. Early in his first term President Bush signed the UN Persistent Organic Pollutants (POPs) Convention, effectively banning many important insecticides, including DDT, that are essential for controlling malaria-carrying mosquitoes. The UN’s ineffective programs instead call for confronting malaria with insecticide-treated bed nets and drugs.
“It breaks my heart to know that little children are dying needlessly because of a mosquito bite,” Bush said during his visit to Tanzania. At a hospital in Arusha, Tanzania, he said: “For years malaria has been a health crisis in sub-Sahara Africa. The disease keeps sick workers home, schoolyards quiet, communities in mourning. The suffering caused by malaria is needless and every death caused by malaria is unacceptable.”
Paul Driessen, senior policy adviser for the Congress of Racial Equality and author of Eco-Imperialism: Green Power, Black Death, echoes the outrage of many scientists and medical professionals who condemn the U.S. and UN programs that are responsible for the horrendous malaria toll throughout the developing world. Driessen has scorching words for the U.S. and European “anti-pesticide activists and bureaucrats — safe in their air-conditioned, malaria-free offices” who “worry about trivial risks from pesticides — and ignore the devastation and death caused by diseases that pesticides could prevent.”
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