Finance expert turns attention (and cash) to malaria, diversity doesn't equal war, and drought warning amid S. Asia monsoon...

Malaria-free zones in Africa

An American investment expert has added a one-man mission to create malaria-free zones in Africa to his portfolio.

He says he was flabbergasted to discover malaria kills at least a million people a year, and that international efforts to stop it don't seem to be moving forward very quickly.

So far, fund manager Lance Laifer has raised the cash to establish five "malaria-free zones" in Ghana, Nigeria and Kenya, and thinks he can reach 100 more villages next year. He's planning to expand to Ivory Coast and Benin next.

Laifer calculates it costs less than $10,000 to buy bed nets, medication, insecticide - and swamp drainage if necessary - for a village of 1,000 people. "That's a doable number," he told the Wall Street Journal.

Jason Riley, writing in an editorial in the newspaper, obviously prefers people who get on and do things - even if it's on a tiny scale - over large, bureaucratic organisations of any political hue that spend more time planning than acting.

Riley also has an axe to grind with environmentalists. He thinks it's crazy that African nations make do without DDT (that's dichhlorodiphenytricholoroethane, if you're curious) - which is highly effective in fighting malaria-carrying mosquitoes - because they're scared of losing lucrative agricultural markets in the United States and Europe if they use a product that's banned for agricultural use in many countries.

The anti-DDT lobby says the chemical has dire environmental consequences and is suspected by some scientists of causing birth defects in humans.

But there's more to this controversy than environmentalist-bashing. There are debates about what's most cost-effective, and what communities in malaria-prone communities really want, apart from keeping their children safe of course.

The World Health Organisation (WHO) says sometimes people in malaria-prone areas don't want their houses sprayed (one disadvantage is having to repaint walls to hide the white resides left by DDT application). Some studies show that insecticide-treated nets are as effective as spraying in certain settings.

The WHO provides answers to a list of frequently asked questions about why DDT is so controversial. On the whole, it says the amounts of DDT used for malaria control are nowhere near as high as those unleashed when it's used as a pesticide, and DDT is generally effective if sprayed on indoor spaces where mosquitoes aren't wanted, just before the peak season.

AlertNet's malaria crisis briefing has the basic facts on a disease that accounts for a fifth of all hospital cases and a quarter of child deaths.

Ethnic diversity doesn't cause conflict

It's a fairly common view that, if you get a lot of very different people in the same place, someone will start a fight. I disagree with that idea very strongly, so I'm happy to see that historians at California's highly respected Stanford University have produced some research that backs me up.

They say multiethnic countries are no more prone to civil war than largely homogenous ones. The New York Times Magazine reports on the authors' findings: "It appears not to be true that a greater degree of ethnic or religious diversity - or indeed any particular cultural demography - by itself makes a country more prone to civil war."

The research by James D. Fearon and David Laitin, who specialise in writing about post-1945 civil wars, seems to be fairly surprising news to some people.

The New York Times quotes Italian Fascist dictator Benito Mussolini, who in 1938 said: "If Czechoslovakia finds herself today in what might be called a 'delicate situation', it is because she was not just Czechoslovakia, but Czech-Germano-Polono-Magyaro-Rutheno-Rumano-Slovakia."

Well, I've never thought of Mussolini as an ideological role model anyway.

Drought warning for India's Bihar

It's monsoon season in South Asia, and floods have swept away homes in India, Cambodia and Vietnam in the past few weeks. But the eastern Indian state of Bihar is bracing for a drought.

Inland, and just below Nepal, Bihar's state government has already announced it will subsidise diesel used by farmers to irrigate their fields. The Times of India quotes Bihar chief minister Nitish Kumar telling farmers: "Save the crops as much as you can."

The state hasn't had enough rain in August. It needs average rainfall of around 700mm (2.3 inches), but so far has only received 490 mm (1.6 inches), according to a meteorological official quoted by the newspaper.

Ruth Gidley
AlertNet journalist