Cigarette giant British American Tobacco is leading a campaign to stop Uganda from joining one of Africa's most lauded efforts to date to control the blight of malaria.
Uganda has more than 12 million cases of malaria every year, killing 110,000 people, mostly children and pregnant women, and, encouraged by the success of other African countries in controlling malaria, the Ugandan government is preparing to spray the walls of homes with a weak solution of DDT to kill the disease-carrying anopheles mosquitoes.
Yet British American Tobacco, in a coalition with many other corporations in Uganda, has called for a delay to the spraying program, warning that the use of DDT could threaten lucrative exports of tobacco, coffee, cut flowers and other agricultural products.
The group says exports worth more than US$400 million and 600,000 Ugandan jobs could be lost if DDT is found to contaminate the export crops.
The companies have urged the Kampala government to carry out further studies on the use of DDT and to use of alternative methods, although they have been found to be ineffective against malaria in other African countries.
The controversial DDT has recently been endorsed by the WHO and other major public health groups as an effective and safe chemical to use against malaria.
Catherine Armstrong, spokesperson for British American Tobacco in London, said the company does not oppose the use of DDT.
"A consortium of 52 companies in Uganda, including BAT, issued a statement which outlined the potential negative and economically damaging impact of the use of DDT," she said.
"The group of companies asks that the government put in place measures to make sure that crops do not get contaminated. Crops stored inside family huts could be contaminated. If agricultural exports are rejected from the EU, the US and Australia, this would be disastrous for the economy and jobs," she said.
Anti-malaria activists are furious with British American Tobacco and the other companies in Uganda. They say many countries, including Mozambique, Zambia, Madagascar and South Africa have used DDT for decades against malaria without the rejection of exports.
South Africa offers a good example of the effectiveness of spraying homes with the DDT solution. In 1996 the South African government stopped using DDT and replaced it with synthetic pyrethroid insecticides.
The country almost immediately plummeted into one of its worst ever malaria epidemics -- from around 6,000 cases in 1995 to over 60,000 in 2000.
Richard Tren, director of Africa Fighting Malaria, called the company "hypocritical and callous" for its stand in Uganda.
"Decades of evidence have proved DDT can save millions of lives. That BAT would oppose DDT in this way is not only foolish, it is deadly and represents a truly shameful episode in the company's history," he said.
X-37B COMPARISON: China’s spaceplane is most likely testing technology, much like US’ vehicle, said Victoria Samson, an official at the Secure World Foundation China’s shadowy, uncrewed reusable spacecraft, which launches atop a rocket booster and lands at a secretive military airfield, is most likely testing technology, but could also be used for manipulating or retrieving satellites, experts said. The spacecraft, on its third mission, was last month observed releasing an object, moving several kilometers away and then maneuvering back to within a few hundred meters of it. “It’s obvious that it has a military application, including, for example, closely inspecting objects of the enemy or disabling them, but it also has non-military applications,” said Marco Langbroek, a lecturer in optical space situational awareness at Delft
Malaysia yesterday installed a motorcycle-riding billionaire sultan as its new king in lavish ceremonies for a post seen as a ballast in times of political crises. The coronation ceremony for Malaysia’s King Sultan Ibrahim, 65, at the National Palace in Kuala Lumpur followed his oath-taking in January as the country’s 17th monarch. Malaysia is a constitutional monarchy, with a unique arrangement that sees the throne change hands every five years between the rulers of nine Malaysian states headed by centuries-old Islamic royalty. While chiefly ceremonial, the position of king has in the past few years played an increasingly important role. Royal intervention was
The Philippine Air Force must ramp up pilot training if it is to buy 20 or more multirole fighter jets as it modernizes and expands joint operations with its navy, a commander said yesterday. A day earlier US National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan said that the US “will do what is necessary” to see that the Philippines is able to resupply a ship on the Second Thomas Shoal (Renai Shoal, 仁愛暗沙) that Manila uses to reinforce its claims to the atoll. Sullivan said the US would prefer that the Philippines conducts the resupplies of the small crew on the warship Sierra Madre,
AIRLINES RECOVERING: Two-thirds of the flights canceled on Saturday due to the faulty CrowdStrike update that hit 8.5 million devices worldwide occurred in the US As the world continues to recover from massive business and travel disruptions caused by a faulty software update from cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike, malicious actors are trying to exploit the situation for their own gain. Government cybersecurity agencies across the globe and CrowdStrike CEO George Kurtz are warning businesses and individuals around the world about new phishing schemes that involve malicious actors posing as CrowdStrike employees or other tech specialists offering to assist those recovering from the outage. “We know that adversaries and bad actors will try to exploit events like this,” Kurtz said in a statement. “I encourage everyone to remain vigilant