Malaria

Tonight, 3,000 families in sub-Saharan Africa will mourn the deaths of their children. A similar number mourned yesterday; the same number will mourn tomorrow and the next day as drug-resistant strains of malaria claim more lives. Malaria's deadly march has been unrelenting, killing on average 1 million people each year, mostly women and small children, and infecting 500 million in the poor regions of the world. If the mosquito-borne disease is not checked, it could replace AIDS as the No. 1 killer in the developing world.

ILLNESS, far more than bad government or crime, is what holds Africa back from development. AIDS and the revival of malaria come foremost in shortening life spans, destroying work forces, discouraging investment, fostering despair. Sun reporter Douglas Birch gave a riveting account Sunday of the suffering endured by Africans with malaria. He detailed the heroic effort to find a vaccine by physicians at the Walter Reed Army Institute of Research led by Dr. W. Ripley Ballou. Parasitic diseases in Africa -- sleeping sickness and river blindness, along with malaria, tuberculosis and AIDS -- have not attracted as many resources as they might.

Jason Rasgon wants to assure the world of one thing: His genetically modified mosquitoes do not have eyes that glow in the dark. Yes, under fluorescent bulbs, some of the mosquitoes at the Johns Hopkins Malaria Research Institute will glow a bright red or green. When magnified, they look like space aliens. But Rasgon and colleagues say it's what you can't see that makes these bugs important: They're prototypes for a generation of genetically modified mosquitoes that could be released into the wild to help eradicate malaria.

DDT is saving lives in South Africa, and in two dozen other tropical countries ravaged by mosquito-borne malaria. The pesticide, banned by most of the world as an environmental menace, is the most effective, economical weapon against the deadly disease that kills over 1 million people each year. In South Africa, Sun correspondent John Murphy reports, authorities are again using DDT to fight a virulent resurgence of malaria. Blue-uniformed health patrols are systematically spraying homes and buildings in affected areas to kill the infected mosquitoes that carry the disease.

POOLESVILLE -- For the first time in at least 20 years, state health officials began collecting mosquitoes to test them for malaria last night, placing traps along the shores of the Potomac River to see if the deadly parasite has migrated from Virginia into Maryland. Military researchers from the Bethesda-based Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences placed box-like traps in marshy soils along the Potomac just a few miles north of where two teen-agers from the suburbs of Loudoun County, Va., contracted malaria in August.

The owner of a company that raises grass on the uninhabited Montgomery County island where malaria-infected mosquitoes have been found plans to have the 20 employees who worked on the island tested for malaria. William Brockett, who owns Virginia Beef Corp., said that about a dozen Mexican migrant workers and up to eight other employees who cut grass on Selden Island will have blood tests performed to determine if they have malaria. He said that work has ended for the season on the island, where grasses are harvested for sale to nurseries, golf courses and corporations for lawns.

ONE OF THE MOST ambitious efforts at public health ever is the gift of $100 million to the Johns Hopkins University's Bloomberg School of Public Health in hopes of ridding the world of malaria. Some 6 to 9 percent of the world's population, 300 to 500 million people, catch malaria every year. Some 2.7 million die from it, yearly. Survivors may be in pain and incapacitated. The numbers are growing. Malaria is a tropical disease. Nine-tenths of reported cases are in Africa. Up to 2,000 cases are reported a year in the United States, with as many more unreported.

While causing fever, chills and possibly even death for its victims, the malaria parasite also leaves a telltale sign behind: waste. "It's the perfect bar code for us to identify it," said Andrew Feldman, a scientist at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory. The iron-based waste compound is the key to Feldman and others' efforts to develop a portable machine to detect malaria. Malaria infects 300 million people a year and causes 1 million deaths, making it the third deadliest disease in the world after HIV and tuberculosis, according to the World Health Organization.

INGWAVUMA, South Africa - In this lush countryside bordering the Indian Ocean, malaria strikes so rarely that Hervey Williams, chief physician at Mosvold Hospital, finds it difficult to remember whether any of his nearly 50 patients are getting treatment for the disease. He scans the residents of the intensive care ward. Tuberculosis. Broken limbs. A medical textbook's worth of other ailments. Malaria? He's not sure. "Two," a nurse finally reminds him, and both patients are on the mend.

Health officials took steps yesterday toward spraying pesticide on the uninhabited Montgomery County island where malaria-infected mosquitoes have been found, as medical personnel tested workers employed on the island for the disease. Pesticide could be sprayed as early as Wednesday over Selden Island, a 400-acre tract where researchers found malaria-infected mosquitoes in traps, said Lynn Frank, chief of public health services for Montgomery County. Frank said health officials are meeting with environmental groups this week to alert them to plans by Maryland and Virginia to spray the pesticide naled from a Maryland Department of Agriculture plane.