Peter Wamboga-Mugirya* – IPS/IFEJ
KAMPALA, Sep 25 2006 (IPS) – A population explosion in the highlands in south-west Uganda has turned fertile wetlands into breeding grounds for malarial mosquitoes.
Waves of migrant settlers have encroached on the wetlands to build makeshift homes and practice farming which is the main source of livelihood in these villages in Kabale district, on the border with Rwanda.
Wetland reclamation has contributed to changes in malaria epidemiology, observed the Ministry of Health. Official figures, which have not been updated for the last six years, revealed that 100,000 people had died from malaria in Kabale in 1999.
U.S. President George W. Bush s malaria control initiative launched in June 2005 in Angola, Tanzania and Uganda by the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) has targeted the district.
The 1.7 million dollar pilot project, which is being monitored among others by the Ugandan health ministry and International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN), has carried out extensive indoor spraying of the chemical lambda-cyhalothrin (ICON), in Kabale.
The chemical has had side-effects on people who have registered complaints of severe itching of the eyes, ears and nose, a bio-safety officer in the Ministry of Agriculture, Animal Industry and Fisheries (MAAIF), based in the border town of Katuna, 500 kms south-west of the Ugandan capital, said in an interview.
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According to the official, who did not want to be identified, village communities have also complained of headaches, dizzy spells and temporary loss of hearing. There have been many complaints, the official said. I myself have experienced widespread irritation, with sneezing and prolonged coughing for many days.
But Dr Patrick Tusiime, district director of health services, has defended the ICON imported from the transnational Monsanto in Switzerland. It is true that people suffered short-term itching of the skin if they came into contact with the sprayed walls. But since the introduction of ICON spray, the influx (of patients) to health units for treatment has highly reduced, he asserted.
He said that 320 people die daily in Uganda from malaria. The deadly disease, which is spread by the female anopheles mosquito, is a major cause of poverty and loss of livelihood. It kills between 70,000 and 110,000 under five year olds annually in the country. ICON is an appropriate intervention, he stated.
USAID s project coordinator in Uganda, Patrick Buyinza, was equally emphatic in denying the negative effects of the chemical. He said in an interview that in malaria-ravaged Kabale he saw that mosquitoes which came in contact with ICON dropped dead instantly.
There are no long-term environmental and health side-effects, he said definitively. ICON does not only kill mosquitoes but it also kills cockroaches, fleas and bed-bugs, which are harmful vectors.
Spraying operations were halted from Aug. 22. But USAID s Buyinza has denied it was related to the complaints. He said the break in spraying was to enable project officials to evaluate progress before it was resumed in January next year.
The head of Uganda s lead environmental agency, the National Environment Management Authority (NEMA), said the Ministry of Health was evaluating the health implications of the chemical. Dr Henry Aryamanya-Mugisha, NEMA s executive director explained: The project is under the supervision of the Ministry of Health for any health implications, while IUCN is taking care of any environmental impact. We at NEMA are equally keenly awaiting the outcome of the report.
Alex Muhwezi, the IUCN resident representative in Uganda, has described ICON as an ordinary pesticide approved by the WHO (World Health Organisation) for indoor use to stem malaria. It all depends on how it has been handled. Most importantly, if a person exposed to ICON has been found already sick or is allergic to perfume or insecticide sprays, then that person experiences bad effects, he said.
Asked if this is partly what he has as a preliminary report on the effects of ICON spraying, Muhwezi said: I don t want to speculate on the outcome, because whereas the spraying has stopped, the project is still ongoing till next year. All these reports need to be verified.
IUCN s main role is to monitor environmental aspects of the exercise with a view to ensuring that there are no spill-overs into the environment outside houses. This week we are supposed to have started an assessment to establish whether there are any significant impacts on the environment, Muhwezi said on Sep. 16 on his return from a visit to the U.S. President s Malaria Initiative (PMI) project in Tanzania.
The insides of a total of 107,000 houses (nearly half a million people) were sprayed with ICON from Jun. 1 to Aug. 22. Health assistants from the Kabale District Directorate of Health Services supervised 350 workers in protective overalls, goggles and gumboots. ICON s mosquito-proofing lasts for six months.
We started the spraying in Maziba Kabale s sub-county hardest-hit by malaria, and after three weeks, the exercise spread out to the rest of the 19 sub-counties. But this was not the first time ICON has been spread in Kabale; it had been sprayed there earlier in 2003 and 2004 to stop a serious outbreak of malaria, Buyinza said.
According to Buyinza, the government will extend the use of ICON to the rest of the country depending on the effectiveness of the pilot project in Kabale. Results will be tracked by means of household surveys, paper trails and verbal autopsies.
Under the PMI, an additional 1.2 billion dollars will be channeled by USAID into malaria control programmes in 15 African countries over five years.
PMI prioritises concrete interventions particularly indoor residual spraying with ICON, distribution of insecticide-treated bednets and purchase of effective drugs over advice. With the WHO revoking the ban on DDT for indoor spraying on Sep. 15, its use in Africa under the PMI is bound to accelerate.
On Sep. 19, hundreds of people marched on the streets in the Ugandan capital Kampala in support of the lifting of the three-decade ban on the chemical.
(* This story is part of a series of features on sustainable development by IPS Inter Press Service and IFEJ, the International Federation of Environmental Journalists.)
