DDT Paralysis in Africa (described as Polio).

Jan 25, 2025

If you’ve researched the actual causes of paralysis that were falsely blamed on a virus, you will inevitably come across “fact checkers” of your research, as I have.

After the causes of paralysis like lead, arsenic, and DDT are removed from the environment, the paralysis they cause naturally ceases. Fact checkers today say that the “poliovirus” has never been completely eradicated in Africa. But what is it that really was never eradicated in Africa?

This is an image that is often shared on Bluesky, in the context that the polio vaccines should not be banned, elsewise paralysis like this might spread again:

It took me awhile to track down this picture. Although it is undated, I have sourced it to Africa.

This image was published in August 2020 by Rukhsar Jabbar in an article titled: Poliomyelitis: What Africans Need to Know. Jabbar titled the image: “Poliomyelitis: Image of some African children on crutches in residual paralytic stage of poliomyelitis.”

Here’s what you really need to know: Although many people think DDT was banned worldwide, it wasn’t. Let’s look at some facts here.

The Stockholm Convention and Malaria Exception for DDT

From EPA: DDT - A Brief History and Status

Since 1996, EPA has been participating in international negotiations to control the use of DDT and other persistent organic pollutants used around the world. Under the auspices of the United Nations Environment Programme, countries joined together and negotiated a treaty to enact global bans or restrictions on persistent organic pollutants (POPs), a group that includes DDT. This treaty is known as the Stockholm Convention on POPs. The Convention includes a limited exemption for the use of DDT to control mosquitoes that transmit the microbe that causes malaria - a disease that still kills millions of people worldwide.

1945. CDC Toxicological Profile for DDT, DDE, and DDD noted paralysis of a Guniea pig in DDT testing, 1945.

Here’s some old information from the Internet Archives:

Wall Street Journal, July 2001: “In Malaria War, South Africa Turns To Pesticide Long Banned in the West.”

Yes, those three infamous initials are back. Decades ago, the developed world used DDT to win its own battle against the malaria-carrying mosquito and to kill agricultural pests. By the 1970s, however, Western countries were banning the chemical after witnessing the harm it did to the environment, principally from its use on crops.
But in this highland outpost and elsewhere in the tropical reaches of the developing world, malaria's ravages have worsened in recent years as the mosquito and the malaria parasite it spreads have evolved more resistance to DDT alternatives and to drugs. With the disease, one of the world's deadliest, now striking more than 300 million people a year and killing about a million of them, the pendulum appears to be swinging back toward DDT. Today, in South Africa and the two dozen other nations that use it, the pariah pesticide -- still effective and cheaper than anything else on the market -- is seen as the lesser of two evils.

"It's against our conscience to use DDT. But so is watching people die from malaria," says Rejoice Mabudafhasi, South Africa's deputy minister of environmental affairs and tourism. "It's a horrible choice we have to make in our country."

And it raises a painful quandary for Western governments and relief agencies, which recently found themselves pushing for a global ban on DDT at the same time they were seeking to raise an international fund to eradicate malaria: How far should rich nations go in imposing their own values and risk standards on the scourges of poor ones?

Deadly Mutant Strain of Malaria Appears to Have Reached Africa

South Africa yielded to those values in 1996, when a new democratic government, sensitive to international opinion and alarmed by evidence of DDT residues in breast milk, swore off the pesticide and switched to more environmentally friendly sprays. The country had used DDT for 50 years, and had wiped out its most pernicious distributor of malaria, a mosquito species known as Anopheles funestus.

But two years ago, South Africa's malaria rates suddenly skyrocketed to 50,000 cases a year from just a few thousand, outstripping even the number of new HIV/AIDS cases in parts of the country. The funestus was back -- and it was resistant to the newer chemicals. So, South Africa went back to DDT. Now it is leaning on its eastern neighbor, Mozambique, to follow suit.

"It has been our saving grace," says Keith Hargreaves, a South African entomologist in the Ubombo region, who caught malaria four times in four months during the recent epidemic. Since South Africa resumed spraying DDT in early 2000, Mr. Hargreaves, who monitors the mosquito population, hasn't caught malaria in months. Nor has he caught a single funestus in his traps.

"Until we find something else that works, we must keep all our options open," says Mr. Hargreaves. "To ban DDT completely would be tragic."

Yet that was just what the developed world recently set out to do with a proposed treaty to ban 12 of the world's nastiest environmental pollutants. For many nations, dichloro-diphenyl-trichloroethane was at the top of the list. Though scientists have yet to agree on whether there's a conclusive link between DDT and any human illness, its toxicity and its persistence in the environment make it a deadly threat to many forms of wildlife.

Only India and China still produce the pesticide, mainly for domestic use. A secretive network of brokers fills most of the rest of the world's demand for the fine white powder from supplies warehoused in Asian and Latin American countries that have ceased making and using it. In South Africa, for example, a local company, working through a European broker, says it imports about 80 tons of DDT per spraying season, mostly from stockpiles in Asia.

Boiling Point

But over the past year, as negotiators hammered out the details of the environmental treaty, emotions reached a boiling point over the developing world's insistence that the use of DDT for malaria control be exempted from the ban. True, the exemption's advocates conceded, DDT kills birds and other wild species, but, they argued, malaria kills children -- about one every 40 seconds in sub-Saharan Africa.

"It was getting to the stage of 'Look at these environmentalists, they don't care about black babies dying in Africa,' " says one negotiator, who backed an all-out ban.

In the end, the human-health argument prevailed. When government officials from around the globe met in Stockholm in May to sign the treaty, 31 of the more than 90 nations that participated, including South Africa, registered for the malaria-control exemption. From a Swedish convention hall, a harsh reality emerged: The world wouldn't be free of DDT until it was free of malaria.

"If we get the global community to take malaria as seriously as it needs to be taken, then we can find alternatives to DDT," says Brooks Yeager, a Washington-based vice president of the global threats program at the World Wildlife Fund.

And so, the push is on to "Roll Back Malaria," the new battle cry of the World Health Organization. Philanthropists, such as Microsoft Corp.'s Bill Gates, are donating millions to research and to the quest for a possible vaccine, drug companies are studying more effective treatments for the disease, and scientists are probing the mosquito's genome, hoping to unlock some useful secrets. Meanwhile, international relief agencies are working to develop and distribute cheap repellent-treated bed nets to protect children in malarial areas at night, when the mosquito is most voracious.

Their efforts have yet to help people like Vasco Abilio Cumaio, who recently returned to the regional hospital in Boane, Mozambique, seeking treatment for another bout of malaria. Last year, the hospital, where flies and mosquitoes buzz around the waiting room, had 65,723 malaria cases -- about 180 a day. The 34-year-old Mr. Cumaio showed up last month and the month before. Now, he is back with two cousins also gripped by the chills, fever and aches that indicate the onset of the disease.

"The drugs didn't work last month," says Mr. Cumaio. "I'm not sure the medicine will work this time either."

If malaria isn't treated promptly, and with the proper drug, it can kill quickly as the parasite clogs the circulatory system of its victim, impeding the flow of blood. Children under five and pregnant women are most at risk. Children who survive can end up mentally or developmentally impaired.

As Mr. Cumaio waits in a long line to get his prescription filled, he studies a tattered poster illustrating ways to prevent malaria -- spraying, bed nets and cleaning up standing water. "I don't know what, but they need to spray with something," he says, swatting away mosquitoes.

In southern Africa, Mozambique is alone in its refusal to use DDT, but South Africa is pressuring it to use the pesticide as part of a concerted regional attack on the disease. South Africa suspects its recent epidemic was started by mosquitoes arriving from Mozambique, but Mozambique is skeptical of that theory and leery of the pesticide.

"If a product like DDT isn't being used in developed countries because it is dangerous, why should we use it in our country?" asks Francisco Songane, Mozambique's health minister. "Are you saying we are somehow different than other people?"

"For some, DDT is an evil word, like apartheid," explains Andre van der Bergh, an environmental management executive at Billiton PLC. The London-based mining and metals company recently led construction of a $1.4 billion aluminum smelter in Mozambique, the biggest foreign investment yet in the impoverished nation. The company was hit with nearly 7,000 cases of malaria during the smelter's two years of construction, and 13 of its expatriate workers died from the disease. Ever since, Billiton has been urging Mozambique to join South Africa in adding DDT to the rotation of pesticides it uses to fight the disease.

But 20 miles down the road in the capital of Maputo, where photos of mosquitoes hang like wanted posters on the walls of the Health Ministry, the answer remains firm. "No DDT," says Avertino Barreto, chief of infectious disease control.

Both he and Mr. Songane recount malaria's tragic toll on their country's 17 million citizens. Two-thirds of all admissions to pediatric wards in the nation's hospital and 40% of all outpatient consultations are malaria-related. Last year, there were more than three million reported cases of malaria and at least 2,000 deaths. The government says the numbers understate the problem, since many who get malaria don't seek treatment or die before they can get it.

Even so, Dr. Barreto maintains that using DDT to save lives now "is a shortsighted vision. I need a long vision." While South Africa argues that its strategy of spraying DDT only indoors limits the pesticide's contact with the environment, Dr. Barreto asks, "Do we know what impact DDT use will have 10 years from now? Nobody can say what you need to pay tomorrow to deal with the consequences of DDT use today."

DDT proponents insist it's more effective and much cheaper than the alternatives, such as synthetic pyrethroids. According to a study by a Johannesburg-based group called Africa Fighting Malaria, DDT costs the South African government about one cent per square yard of coverage, compared with nearly two cents per square yard for the cheapest pyrethroid it uses and about four cents for a carbamate spray. The overall saving can be even greater: some DDT alternatives need to be sprayed more than once a year.

Mozambique spends about $2 million a year for malaria control, only a quarter of what Dr. Barreto figures is needed to cover the entire population and one-fifth of what South Africa spends. Officials at Billiton, which spent more than $600,000 to finance the more-expensive sprays, says DDT use would increase the area Mozambique could treat for the same amount of money or free up funds for other uses.

But the Mozambicans say they aren't convinced by South African studies showing mosquito resistance to the alternative sprays the country is using. And they argue that they shouldn't have to use DDT just because it costs less.

"It's not fair to say we should use DDT because it's cheap and we're poor," says Mr. Songane, an obstetrician. "My call to the world is to lower the prices of the other chemicals. Or put up the money and develop other alternatives."

Because it relies heavily on foreign aid, Mozambique is susceptible to pressure from the developed world's relief agencies not to use DDT. Some of these agencies, including the foreign-aid arms of some Western governments, in the past have refused to fund DDT spraying programs elsewhere, claiming that they can't use public money to support the use of something that's banned in their own countries. And they fret that Mozambique, invoking the exemption in the Stockholm treaty, might begin using DDT and ask them to fund it.

But Dr. Barreto says Mozambique's opposition to DDT is homegrown. The spray stains the walls of houses, its smell lingers, and it agitates bedbugs and other pests, making them more active. He says that South Africa sprays DDT only inside traditional huts made of mud, sticks and thatch, not in Western-style houses.

'Your House First'

"They only want us to use DDT on poor, rural black people," he says. "So whoever suggests DDT use, I say, 'Fine, I'll start spraying in your house first.' "

The South Africans find Mozambique's objections baffling. "We don't want to use DDT until the cows come home. But it needs to be in our arsenal, because we know it works," says Brian Sharp, the head of malaria research at South Africa's Medical Research Council.

Mr. Sharp believes that the best way to keep mosquitoes from becoming pesticide-resistant is for the entire region to hit them with a coordinated rotation of sprays that include DDT. Otherwise, he says, resistant mosquitoes will cross borders to areas where they can thrive.

Mr. Sharp unfurls a map of the Mozambique-South Africa-Swaziland border area, where he has charted the prevalence of the malaria parasite in children under 15. In South Africa and Swaziland, where DDT is sprayed inside houses, most rates are in the single digits, with the highest, 41.8%, recorded in a South African village near Mozambique. In southern Mozambique, where a more expensive carbamate insecticide is used, the rates rarely fall below 70% and often approach 90%.

"No doubt about it, malaria's the most common illness here," says Antonio Gumende, sliding behind his desk in the one-room clinic in the small southern Mozambican village of Mahubo. "In the summer, it's about 100 cases a week."

On Mr. Sharp's map, Mahubo is in an area where three-quarters of the children are thought to have the malaria parasite. "Last month, the government introduced nets for beds, but I don't think it's enough," Dr. Gumende says, adding that he doesn't remember any spraying locally. Should DDT be used? "Whatever works," he says.

'Many, Many Times'

As he hands out malaria tablets to his patients -- mostly mothers with small children -- Dr. Gumende holds back some pills for himself and his staff. How many times has Dr. Gumende had malaria? He laughs at the question. "Many, many times," he says. He asks his nurse if she has had malaria. "Many, many times," she replies.

Across the border in South Africa, it's another quiet afternoon at Bethesda Hospital. The waiting room is empty. Dr. Delcourt, praising the wider use of bed nets as well as DDT, says with satisfaction that some days pass with no new malaria cases at all.

On a neighboring hilltop, in the village of Jozini, Mr. Hargreaves, the entomologist, is hoping to keep it that way. He opens a screen door and enters a room filled with traps teeming with mosquitoes. He pokes a straw into one trap, sucks up several insects and blows them out into a test tube lined with DDT-impregnated paper. After an hour, he transfers them to a second, untreated test tube. One by one, they die, and Mr. Hargreaves breathes easier. The DDT is still working: no resistance yet.

He unlocks the door to another room and points to the back to a stack of cardboard boxes filled with sachets of DDT. "Only for use by the Department of Health," it says on each box. "Toxic to fish, bees and wildlife. Add water and stir well."

The next round of spraying will commence in several weeks.

The East African, July 2008: Tanzania: Country Finally Starts Using DDT to Fight Malaria

Nairobi — Tanzania has started using Dichloro-diphenyl-trichloroethane (DDT) for Indoor Residual Spraying (IRS) from July this year.
It will be the first East African country to start using the insecticide which is credited with eliminating malaria in the Western world decades ago before it was outlawed in many countries in 1972. Critics said it was harmful for the environment and humans.

Tapai Times, May 2010: DDT: Not the monster it’s made out to be

Nets work to control mosquitoes without having to coat the nets in DDT. Apparently the Gates Foundation made nets coated in DDT, but this is unclear. Artemisia annua is perhaps the most effective cure for the parasite that causes malaria- it is certainly the oldest. Mosquito repellents are made from Artemisia annua.

Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates is fascinating. So is the 19-page annual letter that describes the work of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, the world’s largest philanthropic organization. But for someone as smart as Gates, who can afford to hire experts on any subject under the sun, some of his foundation’s strategies are baffling.
Consider his foundation’s approach to malaria, which focuses on bed nets, a low-tech, only modestly effective intervention, and on the development of a vaccine, a high-tech solution that has eluded intensive efforts for decades. This approach dismisses an old, cheap and safe way to control the vector — the Anopheles mosquito — that spreads the disease: the chemical DDT.
Drugs called artemisinins are safe and exhibit potent, rapid anti-malarial activity. In combination with other anti-malarials, they have been used effectively for several years to treat multiple-drug-resistant malaria. But resistance has arisen and will surely increase, so that in the absence of a vaccine, elimination of the mosquitoes that spread the disease is the key to preventing epidemics.
Unfortunately, flawed public policy limits the available options.
In 1972, on the basis of data on toxicity to fish and migrating birds (but not to humans), the US Environmental Protection Agency banned virtually all uses of DDT, an inexpensive and effective pesticide once widely deployed to kill disease-carrying insects. DDT was subsequently banned for agricultural use worldwide under the 2001 Stockholm Convention on Persistent Organic Pollutants, which stigmatized the chemical and effectively constituted a prohibition.
A basic principle of toxicology is that the dose makes the poison. Although DDT is a (modestly) toxic substance, there is a world of difference between applying large amounts of it in the environment — as farmers did before it was banned — and using it carefully and sparingly to fight mosquitoes and other disease-carrying insects. (When it is used now, if at all, it is sprayed indoors in small amounts to prevent mosquitoes from nesting).
The regulators who banned DDT also failed to take into consideration the inadequacy of alternatives. Because it persists after spraying, DDT works far better than many pesticides now in use, some of which are toxic to fish and other aquatic organisms. With DDT unavailable, many authorities attempting to control mosquitoes are depleting their budgets by repeated spraying with short-acting, marginally effective insecticides.
Moreover, even if mosquitoes become resistant to the killing effects of DDT, they are still repelled by it. An occasional dusting of window frames and door frames is extremely effective. Gates’s experts seem not to know this; the foundation’s annual letter contains the following single mention of DDT: “The world hoped in the 1950s and 1960s that [malaria] could be eliminated by killing mosquitoes with DDT, but that tactic failed when the mosquitoes evolved to be resistant to the chemical.”
Since DDT was banned, insect-borne diseases such as malaria and dengue have been on the rise. In fact, the huge toll of diseases spread by mosquitoes has led some public-health officials to rethink DDT’s use. In 2006, after roughly 50 million preventable deaths, the WHO reversed course and endorsed the use of DDT to kill and repel Anopheles mosquitoes.
Arata Kochi, the WHO official in charge of malaria said: “We must take a position based on the science and the data. One of the best tools we have against malaria is indoor residual spraying. Of the dozen or so insecticides WHO has approved as safe for house spraying, the most effective is DDT.”
However, policies based on science and data have a short half-life at the UN. With a notable absence of fanfare, in May last year the WHO, together with the UN Environment Program, reverted to endorsing less effective methods for preventing malaria, announcing that their goal is “to achieve a 30 percent cut in the application of DDT worldwide by 2014 and its total phase-out by the early 2020s, if not sooner.”
In the absence of effective vaccines or new anti-malarial drugs — and the funding and infrastructure to deliver them — this decision is tantamount to mass murder, a triumph of radical environmental politics over public health.
How can we drain the public-policy swamp?
First, governments should re-evaluate the voluminous data on DDT that have been compiled since the 1970’s and they should make DDT available immediately for mosquito control indoors.
Second, governments should oppose international restrictions on DDT and withhold all funding from UN agencies that oppose the use of the “best available technology” (including DDT) to control mosquito-borne diseases.
Third, public-health officials should embark on a campaign to educate local authorities and citizens about DDT. People now hear only the reflexively anti-pesticide drumbeat of the environmental movement, the lamentable legacy of the benighted Rachel Carson and her acolytes.
And oh, yes, it would be helpful if the world’s greatest philanthropist were to throw his weight behind removing the stigma on DDT.
Henry Miller, a physician and molecular biologist, is a fellow at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution. He was formerly at the US National Institutes of Health and Food and Drug Administration.

VOA, July 2011: African Countries Debate Using DDT in Anti-Malaria Efforts

The chemical pesticide DDT has been banned by most countries for use in agriculture, but some continue to use it indoors to kill insects that carry malaria.
In Zambia, it’s an important part of the government’s malaria control program, and the controlled use of DDT spray has led to a reduction in malaria cases over the years.
Other African countries are facing a rise in the number of cases and several African governments are considering the carefully monitored use of DDT as part of their strategy against the disease.
In Malawi, for example, the Department of Health may undertake a DDT spray program in malaria prone-areas.
There is no doubt that DDT is very effective in killing mosquitoes. The problem lies in what other effects DDT may have on human health, wildlife, environment, horticulture and crops.
Malawi’s secretary of health, Chris Kang’ombe, was part of a delegation that visited Zambia to learn how the use of DDT has helped reduce malaria there.
Kang’ombe is convinced that DDT can help reduce the spread of malaria in Africa -- if handled under controlled conditions by trained personnel and monitored by government agencies.
He says, “DDT is used for indoor spraying. It is used to only spray within, inside the house, dwelling houses. What we have learnt (from Zambia) and we know from our experience here (in Malawi), the other chemicals [are active for] up to about two or three months, whereas with DDT you are talking of six months plus. So in terms of “residue effect,” it (DDT) is better, and also eventually the cost of indoor spraying…will be much cheaper, more cost effective than using other chemicals. “
While authorities in Malawi are still considering using DDT in malaria control, a thorny issue has arisen.
The Tobacco Control Commission is against the idea of using the pesticide. Tobacco is the mainstay of Malawi’s economy, and there’s fear that Western consumers will not buy it if there are any traces of DDT on the crops. So the commission will likely require careful monitoring if Malawi is to start using DDT in malaria control.
Similar views are shared by Uganda’s Network on Toxic Free Malaria Control. The network is against the use of DDT as a malaria control strategy.
“We have no law specifically for DDT,” says Network Secretary General Ellady Muyambi . “ We have no trained manpower. We do not have equipment in terms of transportation facilities, in terms of storage facilities, in terms of disposal facilities, in terms of laboratories for chromatography. We do not have the capacity. We are still relaying on donor funding and we are saying why can’t our country use its own resources to deal with its own problems, especially these ones like malaria.,” says Muyambi.
Also involved in the DDT debate is Kenya, another country debating whether to use the pesticide.
Shrikant Bhatt professor of medicine at the University of Nairobi in Kenya explains why the controlled use of DDT should be reintroduced. “We are almost getting defeated by the pandemic that is occurring due to malaria. [Anti-malarial] drugs are gaining resistance [to the parasite]. You know we have very few drugs which we can use as effective means of controlling malaria. So, I think we do not have any option but to reintroduce DDT in a limited way, [like] spraying DDT indoors or using it in endemic areas we should be able to contain the malaria pandemic,” he explains.
The International Centre for Insect Physiology and Ecology (ICIPE), also based in Kenya, is taking different approach.
John Githure a researcher at the centre says “ICIPE is largely concentrating on how we can come up with innovative ways or even using available products to kill the mosquitoes at larval stage. “
One such product uses soil-dwelling bacteria called bacillus thuringiensis, or BTi.
Githure says ,”we are trying to introduce that in Africa and ICIPE have of course gone ahead to construct a demonstration factory that will be able to at least make the product BTi available, affordable and accessible to the community to use for mosquito control.”
Meanwhile, the government and various organizations including Melinda and Bill Gates Foundation are encouraging free distribution of insecticide-treated mosquito nets and sleeping under bed-nets as short term measure for malaria control.

PSU watch (India), July 2020: HIL supplies 20.60 MT of DDT to South Africa for Malaria control programme

New Delhi: HIL (India) Limited, a Miniratna PSU under the Ministry of Chemicals and Fertilizers, said on Tuesday that the company has supplied 20.60 Metric Tonne of Dichlorodiphenyltrichloroethane (DDT) 75 percent WP to South Africa for their Malaria control programme on July 20. The Department of Health, South Africa shall be utilising DDT in three provinces adjoining Mozambique. The region is highly affected by Malaria and it has reported maximum morbidity and mortality due to the disease in recent years.

The Citizen (Tanzania) May 2022. Tanzania to conduct house to house polio vaccination

Around end of February this year, a case of polio was reported in neighbouring Malawi, being the first time the disease was reported in Africa since 2020.
Dar es Salaam. The government has announced the start of the second phase of administering polio vaccination between May 18 to 21, this year.
The compulsory vaccine is expeted to be administered to estimated 10.3 million under-five children across all regions of Tanzania.
Around end of February, this year, Malawi, for the first time since 2020 when the disease was reported in Africa, reported about the resurfacing of polio after a three-year-old girl was a affected by the virus.

Science Direct, 2024. DDT contamination in water resources of some African countries and its impact on water quality and human health

IMAGE: Average DDT levels in African countries

The study aimed to provide a review of available research investigating the levels of DDT residues in water sources in Africa and to assess the consequent human health risks. A scoping review of published studies in Africa was conducted through a systematic electronic search using PubMed, Web of Science, EBSCO HOST, and Scopus. A total of 24 articles were eligible and reviewed. Concentrations of DDT ranged from non-detectable levels to 81.2 μg/L. In 35% of the studies, DDT concentrations surpassed the World Health Organization (WHO) drinking water guideline of 1 μg/L in the sampled water sources. The highest DDT concentrations were found in South Africa (81.2 μg/L) and Egypt (5.62 μg/L). DDT residues were detected throughout the year in African water systems, but levels were found to be higher during the wet season. Moreover, water from taps, rivers, reservoirs, estuaries, wells, and boreholes containing DDT residues was used as drinking water.

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