DDT study prompts Ethiopia to adopt safer malaria control

摘要

This report, published by the Institute of Sustainable Development in Ethiopia, presents the alarming findings of a survey of over 400 smallholder Ethiopian farmers in the Rift Valley. The key finding was that almost a third of farmers use DDT on their crops, despite it being banned globally for agricultural use. Ethiopia is one of the African countries that started using DDT to combat malaria, following a now-retracted WHO statement in 2006 giving DDT 'a clean bill of health' for indoor spraying, and this study is the first to indicate such widespread failure to control leakage into the agricultural sector. In general, it systematically documents a reality that most African researchers and regulators are familiar with through personal experience and informal hearsay, but which is generally not available in such a rigorous and factually based format. This study was the starting point for a chain of events since 2007 which culminated recently in the Ethiopian government declaring a switch from DDT to deltamethrin for indoor residual spraying (June 2009).