Background: Considerable declines in malaria have accompanied increased funding for control since the year 2000, but historical failures to maintain gains against the disease underscore the fragility of these successes. Although malaria transmission can be suppressed by effective control measures, in the absence of active intervention malaria will return to an intrinsic equilibrium determined by factors related to ecology, efficiency of mosquito vectors, and socioeconomic characteristics. Understanding where and why resurgence has occurred historically can help current and future malaria control programmes avoid the mistakes of the past. Methods: A systematic review of the literature was conducted to identify historical malaria resurgence events. All suggested causes of these events were categorized according to whether they were related to weakened malaria control programmes, increased potential for malaria transmission, or technical obstacles like resistance. Results: The review identified 75 resurgence events in 61 countries, occurring from the 1930s through the 2000s. Almost all resurgence events (68/75=91%) were attributed at least in part to the weakening of malaria control programmes for a variety of reasons, of which resource constraints were the most common (39/68=57%). Over half of the events (44/75=59%) were attributed in part to increases in the intrinsic potential for malaria transmission, while only 24/75 (32%) were attributed to vector or drug resistance.

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Malaria resurgence: a systematic review and assessment of its causes

Diseases caused by infectious agents have profoundly affected both human history and biology. In demographic terms, infectious diseases-including both great epidemics, such as plague and smallpox, which have devastated human populations from ancient to modem times, and less dramatic, un­ named viral and bacterial infections causing high infant mortality-have likely claimed more lives than all wars, noninfectious diseases , and natural disasters taken together. In the face of such attack by microscopic invaders , human populations have been forced to adapt to infectious agents on the levels of both genes and culture. As agents of natural selection, infectious diseases have played a major role in the evolution of the human species . Infectious diseases have also been a prime mover in cultural transformation, as societies have responded to the social, economic, political, and psychological disrup­ tion engendered by acute epidemics (e.g. measles , influenza) and chronic, debilitating infectious diseases (e.g. malaria, schistosomiasis) . Today, the global epidemic of acquired immune deficiency syndrome (AIDS) provides a salient example of the processes underlying infectious-disease-related cultural transformations. As many of the examples cited in this review illustrate, human groups have often unwittingly facilitated the spread of infectious

https://www.jstor.org/stable/pdfplus/2155960.pdf

The Anthropology of Infectious Disease

This paper is a general interpretation of the social determinants of health and health care in Africa over the past century. The evolution of health cannot be separated from the broader story of social change. The political and economic forces which shaped the continent's history also established the framework within which patterns of diagnosis and treatment, health and disease, emerged. The implication of this is that healers of all kinds—whether doctors or “traditional healers”—have been less influential than we commonly think in shaping states of health or in healing the sick. This position opens up a range of difficult problems which are addressed in the following pages. What is the exact nature of the link between the broad political-economic forces and the distribution of health or disease? Which of these forces have driven therapeutics along its historical path, and by what means? What role do healers actually play? The body of the paper is divided into three main sections. The first explores the micro-sociology of changing treatment of illness. In most African communities several kinds of healers work side by side: physicians or medical assistants, specialists in sorcery or spirit possession, Christian or Muslim religious healers, and others. Multiple authorities co-exist, and therefore no one healer decides the cause or cure of illnesses in a way which others accept as beyond challenge. But treatment cannot exist without coordination. Someone must decide on a course of action when lives are threatened.

Struggles for control: the social roots of health and healing in modern Africa.

A companion to the reformation world

Many developing countries are importing industrial processes that make use of toxic chemicals. By the same token, pesticides, which are toxic by design, are also used increasingly in agriculture and in public health programs to control pests and vector‐borne diseases. Recent estimates suggest that pesticides account for more than 20,000 fatalities yearly, and that most of these will have occurred in developing countries. This may actually be a gross underreporting. Although organophosphate and carbamate insecticides are still responsible for many of those poisoning cases, herbicides such as paraquat are also increasingly being implicated in fatal poisoning cases. Newer pesticides such as the synthetic derivatives of pyrethrin, which were believed to be relatively safe to humans, now appear to be implicated in some serious cases of intoxication. Community‐based pest control using locally available botanical pesticides could have severe consequences unless the toxicity of these compounds is carefully assess...

Pesticides and the third world

/pdf/agricultural-production-and-malaria-resurgence-in-central-4ift914er0.pdf

Agricultural production and malaria resurgence in Central America and India

Civil-religious hierarchies (cargo systems) have often formed the subject of anthropological research in Mesoamerica; indeed, it has been said that they play an essential role in structuring and organizing native communities. Using ethnohistorical evidence from highland Chiapas, however, we argue that such hierarchies emerged in the late 19th and early 20th centuries in response to changes in the regional economy that placed new demands upon Indian laborers. [civil-religious hierarchies, cargo systems, Mesoamerica, economic development]

https://anthrosource.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.1525/ae.1980.7.3.02a00050

civil-religious hierarchies in central Chiapas: a critical perspective

Pesticide use and malaria resurgence in Central America and India

https://anthrosource.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.1525/ae.1983.10.3.02a00140

The Indian Christ, the Indian King: The Historical Substrate of Maya Myth and Ritual. VICTORIA REIFLER BRICKER

/pdf/final-words-on-malaria-s-return-3zukplm60u.pdf

Robert Wasserstrom

Papers

Agricultural production and malaria resurgence in Central America and India

civil-religious hierarchies in central Chiapas: a critical perspective

Pesticide use and malaria resurgence in Central America and India

The Indian Christ, the Indian King: The Historical Substrate of Maya Myth and Ritual. VICTORIA REIFLER BRICKER

Final words on malaria's return