Fishing for ways to fight malaria
The malaria parasite's become increasingly resistant to drugs, so researchers in Kenya have a new approach: Stock ponds with Nile Tilapia. The fish eat malaria-carrying mosquito larvae. People can eat the fish... if they want to. Helen Palmer has more.
They're not tasty like Tilapia but health officials in some parts of Southern California have been providing free Mosquitofish to anyone who wants to control mosquitoes on their property. (David McNew/Getty Images).
More on Africa, Health, International
TEXT OF STORY
Scott Jagow: You ever had Tilapia? It's a pretty tasty fish. Well, it was until I heard about this: Tilapia eat mosquito larvae. In Africa, this is apparently a great way to fight Malaria. Helen Palmer reports from our Health Desk at WGBH.
Helen Palmer: Malaria is a huge global health problem across Africa, Asia and Latin America. There are as many as 500 million cases every year.
Patrick Kachur: It is a huge problem globally. It kills in the neighborhood of a million people every year, and the vast majority of those are children under the age of 5.
Patrick Kachur of the CDC's malaria branch says there's a global need for more ways to fight the disease, because the malaria parasite's increasingly resistant to current drugs. He says fish could be a useful addition to mosquito nets treated with insecticide.
Dan Milner of the Harvard School of Public health says fish wouldn't address the main source of the problem.
Dan Milner: The vast burden of mosquito population is really these small stagnant pools of water in and around their dwellings and their food production sources which are not going to support fish life.
The WHO calculates that in countries with high rates of disease malaria accounts for 40 percent of health spending. Malaria costs about a billion dollars a year in lost productivity.
In Boston, I'm Helen Palmer for Marketplace.
