huge insect die off

[Mott the Hoople]

Having been to Uganda each of the past three years, I don't think there is any alternative that has been found. Case after case of malaria and many yellow fever as well. That was the point of my question. Not sure how it is beneficial to the environment when you have hundreds of strains of malaria that cause massive damage to animals and humans alike (not every strain affects every species... I think it less than ten that affect humans). DDT was helping control malaria.

Well first I envy you. I’ve always dreamed of going on safari to that region of Africa. I have in the past organized mosquito control programs for client with construction projects where standing water was an issue and golf courses and municipalities where we would send techs on a regularly scheduled routes where they would toss a certain quantity of product that was a biodegradable deoxygenater into sumps, storm water drains, water traps...anything with standing water where mosquitos would breed. It would starve the larvae of oxygen at a critical point of their development thus killing them. I can’t remember the product (that was 15 years ago) but it was nontoxic and biodegradable.

So without doing more research I would have no idea if there are current non-toxic products that would be affective for the situation in Uganda. Keep in mind that chemicals are just one method of controlling mosquitoes.

But the point here is that if your only choice is bioaccumulative halogenated pesticides (many of which are dioxin precursors) like DDT than you have a very difficult public health decision to make based on human health and safety vs long term environmental damage. Not a good place to be obviously and a difficult decision to make.