dc.description.abstract | In the early 1960s, President Kwame Nkrumah, the then doyen of Pan African politics, suggested that it
would be appropriate to erect a monument in honour of mosquito which had frustrated European
colonization of the West Coast of Africa. The inference was that the mosquito-borne malaria parasite was
killing the Europeans but had minimal effect on the indigenous people. The Europeans, some of them
missionary doctors, had access to antimalarial drugs. In contrast, the Africans had no access to such drugs
as there were no health facilities or infrastructure to enable them move freely. Up to 1940, the only
antimalarial in use was quinine, either in pure form or as Cinchona bark preparations. Chloroquine was
introduced later after the World War II. Extensive control measures targeting mosquito using dichlorodiphenyl-trichloroethane
(DDT) aerial spray led to elimination of malaria in Southern European countries
such as Italy and Spain. In the 1950s and 1960s, malaria was under control and even total eradication was
considered possible. | en_US |