I find this interesting because Africa has such a skewed capital/labor ratio that the control methods used in 1906 are probably not completely inappropriate for Africa today; in other words, they don’t have a lot of capital to spend on new pharmaceutical treatments but they do have surplus labor (i.e., high unemployment rates and lots of people employed in unproductive jobs) that could be employed in the kind of massive civil engineering that the US used to control mosquitoes in Panama.
To solve the malaria problem in Africa, might we be better off employing Africans in civil engineering programs rather than paying for R&D to develop new drugs in US/European labs?

First, I can’t find the primary article this data comes from (although the chart is repeated in several publications from WHO, RBM, and Harvard speakers). Second, I’m sure there are huge uncertainties in the acccuracy of malaria statistics in Africa today, let alone in 1930. With those disclaimers, Africa’s performance is shocking. While all other regions have been constantly reducing deaths from Malaria since 1930, Africa has experienced rising deaths with the most severe increases occurring since 1970. Put another way, Africa’s share of world malaria deaths has risen from 3% in 1900 to over 90% in 2000.
China and Asia experienced a precipitous decline in deaths over the period; presumably African nations had access to the same knowledge base of control techniques and treatments. What’s the explanation for Africa’s trends going the wrong way? Does it make sense to invest in R&D for new drug therapies before addressing why previous therapies failed in Africa?

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