Bill Clinton is on the tour being bankrolled by drug companies trying to push malaria drugs.
This looks innocent enough at first blush, but when you think of it, this is just a way for the drug companies to push their drugs at a reduced price while curbing the use of DDT which will certainly reduce the need for the malaria drugs altogether. Not good for drug companies.
Currently South Africa has been re-utilizing DDT to eliminate malaria there with some 70% eradication of the disease, while others on the continent have been using drugs to stay alive.
Poor economic conditions have led people to use the cheaper ineffective versions of the drugs which have little effect because of drug resistance. The typical treatment ranges between $8 – $10 per treatment and is out of reach to most.
So before the DDT program starts to spread across the continent and reduce the use of drugs to fight malaria, the drug companies have put Bill Clinton on the subsidized malaria drug tour, where drug companies will reduce the price of malaria drugs “to wholesalers” at $1 per treatment. Those drugs will then be distributed at a profit to regional and local pharmacies and made available the people.
Population control advocates blamed DDT for increasing third world population. In the 1960s, World Health Organization authorities believed there was no alternative to the overpopulation problem but to assure than up to 40 percent of the children in poor nations would die of malaria. As an official of the Agency for International Development stated, “Rather dead than alive and riotously reproducing.”
[Desowitz, RS. 1992. Malaria Capers, W.W. Norton & Company]
How much less than the current $8 -$10 per treatment, remains to be seen, but one thing for sure, if Africa returns to DDT in an effort to eliminate malaria, drug company profits will dip out of sight.
