Malaria Not Just For Poor People

[Dr. Shane]

'There's no reason only poor people shou...cked conference

It was a show-stopping move by any standards.

Bill Gates, the billionaire founder of Microsoft and a renowned philanthropist, let loose a swarm of mosquitoes at a technology conference in California to highlight the dangers of malaria.

‘Malaria is spread by mosquitoes,’ the Microsoft founder yelled at a well-heeled crowd at a technology conference in California.

’I brought some,’ he added. ‘Here, I’ll let them roam around – there is no reason only poor people should be infected.’

He let the shocked audience sweat for a minute or so before assuring them that the freed insects were malaria- free.

But that didn’t satisfy all the attendees.

‘That’s it. I am not sitting up front anymore,’ eBay founder Pierre Omidyar said.

The stunt was an attempt by Gates – who quit Microsoft last year to concentrate on his charity work - to hammer home the importance of malaria prevention.

It is one of the pet projects of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation that announced last year it was donating £115 million to help develop a vaccine for the deadly disease.

Up to 2.7 million people a year still die of malaria each year, 75 per cent of them African children.

Although malaria has been eradicated in most countries with temperate climates, it is still prevalent on continents like Africa and Asia, which have tropical or subtropical climates.

Gates was speaking at the Technology, Entertainment and Design conference in Long Beach, California which attracts the great and the good from the worlds of science, technology, business, entertainment and academia.

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[phkrause]

Like it says in the Bible, the sun shines on the good and the bad, it rains on the good and the bad, etc.

pk

[Gail]

Oh, I've learned about malaria, all right. My son's had it. And you never really quite get over it once you've had it. It can flair up again at any time.

One interesting thing about malaria... My son has an enzyme deficiency that is rare in N.America but more common in malaria-infested regions. It leads to a disease called "favism", which is an inability to digest fava beans.

But- the lack of this enzyme counteracts the effects of malaria. It would be fatal for Kevin to take standard anti-malarial medication (they have other meds for people like him) but the malaria bug cannot grow well in such individuals. When they do come down with the disease they don't suffer as hard or as long with it.

Interesting!

[CyberGuy]

When I was a missionary kid while my parents were in Ghana west africa from October 1969 to April 1972 I got malaria bad twice. For the first six months there we lived in a house that had 10 foot wide and 8 foot deep gutters to carry the 80 inches of rain a year they get there. Water was always on the bottom and mosquitoes breeded there. I got malaria twice in the first six months we lived there.

Malaria comes on like the flu. High fever of 104 to 105 and violent chills. As soon as the syptoms appear my mom gave me Camaquin which is a malaria cure. Within 24 hours the fever broke and I would be fine. But the malaria would leave me weak and shaky for week or so. Those pesky malaria parasites attack the red blood cells destroying much of them. The weakness is due to the fact the body had lost many of its red blood cells and you are anemic until the body can replace the red blood cells.

Six months later we moved to the mission compound. Far away from open gutters and fewer mosquitoes and better screens in the house. My mom also doubled our preventive malaria medicine we took daily at that time. I guess that helped as well.

To this day whenever I donate blood when it comes to the fact I had Malaria even though it was 40 years ago they stop and look at their charts. Since I have had no reoccurance of Malaria since they accept my blood.

One more note. The Malaria we had in west africa was the most deadly of the malaria strains. Untreated it can cause death in days.

[GreatLakesGramma]

I would have left that room immediately. I am extremely allergic to mosquito bites.