Cigarette giant British American Tobacco is leading a campaign to stop Uganda from joining one of Africa's most lauded efforts to date to control the blight of malaria.
Uganda has more than 12 million cases of malaria every year, killing 110,000 people, mostly children and pregnant women, and, encouraged by the success of other African countries in controlling malaria, the Ugandan government is preparing to spray the walls of homes with a weak solution of DDT to kill the disease-carrying anopheles mosquitoes.
Yet British American Tobacco, in a coalition with many other corporations in Uganda, has called for a delay to the spraying program, warning that the use of DDT could threaten lucrative exports of tobacco, coffee, cut flowers and other agricultural products.
The group says exports worth more than US$400 million and 600,000 Ugandan jobs could be lost if DDT is found to contaminate the export crops.
The companies have urged the Kampala government to carry out further studies on the use of DDT and to use of alternative methods, although they have been found to be ineffective against malaria in other African countries.
The controversial DDT has recently been endorsed by the WHO and other major public health groups as an effective and safe chemical to use against malaria.
Catherine Armstrong, spokesperson for British American Tobacco in London, said the company does not oppose the use of DDT.
"A consortium of 52 companies in Uganda, including BAT, issued a statement which outlined the potential negative and economically damaging impact of the use of DDT," she said.
"The group of companies asks that the government put in place measures to make sure that crops do not get contaminated. Crops stored inside family huts could be contaminated. If agricultural exports are rejected from the EU, the US and Australia, this would be disastrous for the economy and jobs," she said.
Anti-malaria activists are furious with British American Tobacco and the other companies in Uganda. They say many countries, including Mozambique, Zambia, Madagascar and South Africa have used DDT for decades against malaria without the rejection of exports.
South Africa offers a good example of the effectiveness of spraying homes with the DDT solution. In 1996 the South African government stopped using DDT and replaced it with synthetic pyrethroid insecticides.
The country almost immediately plummeted into one of its worst ever malaria epidemics -- from around 6,000 cases in 1995 to over 60,000 in 2000.
Richard Tren, director of Africa Fighting Malaria, called the company "hypocritical and callous" for its stand in Uganda.
"Decades of evidence have proved DDT can save millions of lives. That BAT would oppose DDT in this way is not only foolish, it is deadly and represents a truly shameful episode in the company's history," he said.
The US and the Philippines plan to announce new sites as soon as possible for an expanded Enhanced Defense Cooperation Agreement (EDCA), which gives the Western power access to military bases in the Southeast Asian country. Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos Jr last month granted the US access to four military bases, on top of five existing locations under the 2014 EDCA, amid China’s increasing assertiveness regarding the South China Sea and Taiwan. Speaking at the Basa Air Base in Manila, one of the existing EDCA sites, US Secretary of the Air Force Frank Kendall said the defense agreements between the two countries
CONFLICTING ACCOUNTS: The US destroyer’s routine operations in the South China Sea would have ‘serious consequences,’ the defense ministry said China yesterday threatened “serious consequences” after the US Navy sailed a destroyer around the disputed Paracel Islands (Xisha Islands, 西沙群島) in the South China Sea for the second day in a row, in a move Beijing claimed was a breach of its sovereignty and security. The warning came amid growing tensions between China and the US in the region, as Washington pushes back at Beijing’s growingly assertive posture in the South China Sea, a strategic waterway it claims virtually in its entirety. On Thursday, after the US sailed the USS Milius guided-missile destroyer near the Paracel Islands, China said its navy and
‘DUAL PURPOSE’: Upgrading the port is essential for the Solomon Islands’ economy and might not be military focused, but ‘it is not about bases, it is about access,’ an analyst said The Solomon Islands has awarded a multimillion-dollar contract to a Chinese state company to upgrade an international port in Honiara in a project funded by the Asian Development Bank, a Solomon Islands official said yesterday. China Civil Engineering Construction Co (CCECC) was the only company to submit a bid in the competitive tender, Solomon Islands Ministry of Infrastructure Development official Mike Qaqara said. “This will be upgrading the old international port in Honiara and two domestic wharves in the provinces,” Qaqara said. Responding to concerns that the port could be deepened for Chinese naval access, he said there would be “no expansion.” The Solomon
Seven stories above a shop floor hawking cheap perfume and nylon underwear, Thailand’s “shopping mall gorilla” sits alone in a cage — her home for 30 years despite a reignited row over her captivity. Activists around the world have long campaigned for the primate to be moved from Pata Zoo, on top of a Bangkok mall, with singer Cher and actor Gillian Anderson adding their voices in 2020. However, the family who owns Bua Noi — whose name translates as “little lotus” — have resisted public and government pressure to relinquish the critically endangered animal. The gorilla has lived at Pata for more