Malaria Victims

As the world commemorates Rachel Carson’s birthday and work, let us commemorate the birthdays of the 50 boys and girls whose photos are featured on this website—and millions of others like them. They will never see another birthday. Many of these lives might have been saved had policymakers not abandoned DDT for malaria control in response to Carson’s Silent Spring.

Unfortunately, they are only a small sample of the millions of children who suffer and die every year in Africa and other parts of the world. Including their images is a painful reminder that the victims of malaria are more than statistics. They have faces, they have names, and they should be remembered. These particular children attended a school of 500 orphans in Kampala, Uganda. In 2005, the school lost these 50 children—ten percent of the entire school—to malaria. Across Uganda, more than 50,000 children, and 50,000 parents, died from malaria that year—as they do year after year.

It’s time to set aside politics and misinformation and employ the best measures to control malaria, particularly DDT.

These photos were provided by Congress of Racial Equality, which has instituted a program designed to assist the children in the Kampala school.

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