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Considering an enormous amount of business (you know where food, supplies, etc. comes from) is now facilitated with the Internet, I don't think this is true, es

by suivix 15y ago

Considering an enormous amount of business (you know where food, supplies, etc. comes from) is now facilitated with the Internet, I don't think this is true, especially because they won't see a vaccine for a very long time. The chance of getting the disease is also low, probably not substantially more than getting injured in an automobile crash.

michaelkeenan 15y ago
> The chance of getting the disease is also low, probably not substantially more than getting injured in an automobile crash. Worldwide it was estimated in 2004 that 1.2 million people were killed and 50 million more were injured in motor vehicle collisions.[1] It is estimated that malaria causes 250 million cases of fever and approximately one million deaths annually. [2] If we focus on the 800 million people in Sub-Saharan Africa where 90% of malaria cases occur, a rough estimate would be: If we assume that Africa's traffic accident rate is the same as the world rate (it's not - I see that it's higher when I examine a few countries in this table[3]), it would be 141,000 deaths from traffic accidents and more than 5.9 million injuries from traffic accidents. The world death rate from traffic accidents is 20.8. I'll arbitrarily pick Zimbabwe's 27.5 to be representative of the region so the numbers should be 32% higher. That would be 186,000 deaths and more than 7.8 million injuries. Taking 90% of the world malaria numbers, there are 900,000 deaths and 30 million cases of fever from malaria in Sub-Saharan Africa. So if you're one of the 800 million people in that region, you're 4.8 times more likely to die from malaria than a traffic accident and 3.8 times more likely to get a fever from malaria than be injured in a traffic accident. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Traffic_collision#Epidemiology http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Traffic_collision#Epidemiology [2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malaria#Epidemiology http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malaria#Epidemiology [3] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_traffic-related_death_rate http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_traffic-re...
- ra 15y ago
  It's not just the deaths. If you contract malaria you suffer from it for life, and you become a carrier so that mosquitos can pass it on from you to others. Most people who contract malaria don't die from it, but you do get VERY sick. It's an incurable disease that comes back year after year for the rest of your life.
  - vidarh 15y ago
    > It's an incurable disease that comes back year after year for the rest of your life. This is not true. My wife is Nigerian. She had malaria a number of times as a child. So did all her sisters. So did the rest of her family. Luckily for them they are from a privileged family that could easily afford proper treatment. None of them have had recurrences in the 10+ years since they moved to the UK. Some forms of malaria can recur. It is not a given that it will. Recurrence happens when the malaria continues to infect the liver after the symptoms subside. However it can be eradicated from the liver too with primaquine to take care of the liver combined with chloroquine and ACT for the primary infection. The problem with Malaria is not that it isn't treatable, but that it 1) infects so many that it's pretty much inevitable that some people don't get treatment in time, and 2) that it mostly affect people in areas that are poor enough for people to have problems getting treatment, 3) because of the scale of the problem there is a very real ongoing concern about drug resistance. For a lot of poor people, though, in practice you are right in that many won't be able to get a proper combination therapy and will keep getting their blood reinfected from their liver.
byoung2 15y ago
The chance of getting the disease is also low, probably not substantially more than getting injured in an automobile crash. I've had malaria once, but I've never been injured in an automobile crash. Luckily I was able to avoid malaria for 25 years by living in Los Angeles (I got it on a trip through the jungle in the Philippines), but for people living in tropical climates where malaria is more common, this may not be an option.
russell 15y ago
> The chance of getting the disease is also low, This is quite wrong. About 15 years ago I went on a trip up the Rio Negro in Brazil. My wife and daughters had taken the standard preventative medicines, but they all came down with a drug resistant form. I escaped because I took a low dosage antibiotic. Their treatment was complicated because the disease didnt manifest itself for 2-3 months, not the normal < 30 days. Also malaria runs in a cycle of 2 weeks or so. It could be detected (then?) only when they were too sick to go to the hospital. When they felt well enough to go to the hospital it had retreated to the liver and wasnt detectable. > Its incurable Not true at all, but the treatment (at the time) required a two drug phased treatment. First the active disease needed to be cleared from the system. Then the reservoir in the liver needed to be killed. They had a drug resistant strain which required strain specific treatment. Treatment in Brazil was complicated because the drugs were OTC and most people treated themselves without a doctor's supervision, leading to the drug resistant strains.

by suivix 15y ago

michaelkeenan 15y ago

> The chance of getting the disease is also low, probably not substantially more than getting injured in an automobile crash. Worldwide it was estimated in 2004 that 1.2 million people were killed and 50 million more were injured in motor vehicle collisions.[1] It is estimated that malaria causes 250 million cases of fever and approximately one million deaths annually. [2] If we focus on the 800 million people in Sub-Saharan Africa where 90% of malaria cases occur, a rough estimate would be: If we assume that Africa's traffic accident rate is the same as the world rate (it's not - I see that it's higher when I examine a few countries in this table[3]), it would be 141,000 deaths from traffic accidents and more than 5.9 million injuries from traffic accidents. The world death rate from traffic accidents is 20.8. I'll arbitrarily pick Zimbabwe's 27.5 to be representative of the region so the numbers should be 32% higher. That would be 186,000 deaths and more than 7.8 million injuries. Taking 90% of the world malaria numbers, there are 900,000 deaths and 30 million cases of fever from malaria in Sub-Saharan Africa. So if you're one of the 800 million people in that region, you're 4.8 times more likely to die from malaria than a traffic accident and 3.8 times more likely to get a fever from malaria than be injured in a traffic accident. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Traffic_collision#Epidemiology http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Traffic_collision#Epidemiology [2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malaria#Epidemiology http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malaria#Epidemiology [3] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_traffic-related_death_rate http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_traffic-re...

ra 15y ago
It's not just the deaths. If you contract malaria you suffer from it for life, and you become a carrier so that mosquitos can pass it on from you to others. Most people who contract malaria don't die from it, but you do get VERY sick. It's an incurable disease that comes back year after year for the rest of your life.
- vidarh 15y ago
  > It's an incurable disease that comes back year after year for the rest of your life. This is not true. My wife is Nigerian. She had malaria a number of times as a child. So did all her sisters. So did the rest of her family. Luckily for them they are from a privileged family that could easily afford proper treatment. None of them have had recurrences in the 10+ years since they moved to the UK. Some forms of malaria can recur. It is not a given that it will. Recurrence happens when the malaria continues to infect the liver after the symptoms subside. However it can be eradicated from the liver too with primaquine to take care of the liver combined with chloroquine and ACT for the primary infection. The problem with Malaria is not that it isn't treatable, but that it 1) infects so many that it's pretty much inevitable that some people don't get treatment in time, and 2) that it mostly affect people in areas that are poor enough for people to have problems getting treatment, 3) because of the scale of the problem there is a very real ongoing concern about drug resistance. For a lot of poor people, though, in practice you are right in that many won't be able to get a proper combination therapy and will keep getting their blood reinfected from their liver.

byoung2 15y ago

The chance of getting the disease is also low, probably not substantially more than getting injured in an automobile crash. I've had malaria once, but I've never been injured in an automobile crash. Luckily I was able to avoid malaria for 25 years by living in Los Angeles (I got it on a trip through the jungle in the Philippines), but for people living in tropical climates where malaria is more common, this may not be an option.

russell 15y ago

> The chance of getting the disease is also low, This is quite wrong. About 15 years ago I went on a trip up the Rio Negro in Brazil. My wife and daughters had taken the standard preventative medicines, but they all came down with a drug resistant form. I escaped because I took a low dosage antibiotic. Their treatment was complicated because the disease didnt manifest itself for 2-3 months, not the normal < 30 days. Also malaria runs in a cycle of 2 weeks or so. It could be detected (then?) only when they were too sick to go to the hospital. When they felt well enough to go to the hospital it had retreated to the liver and wasnt detectable. > Its incurable Not true at all, but the treatment (at the time) required a two drug phased treatment. First the active disease needed to be cleared from the system. Then the reservoir in the liver needed to be killed. They had a drug resistant strain which required strain specific treatment. Treatment in Brazil was complicated because the drugs were OTC and most people treated themselves without a doctor's supervision, leading to the drug resistant strains.