Kind: captions
Language: en
[Music]
this tiny creature is at the center of
one of medical science's greatest
quests a battle to save millions of
lives and end a Scourge that has shaped
human
history
malaria today malaria is considered a
tropical disease but until very recently
it affected people worldwide
[Music]
and it's played a huge part in our
history the United States for example
was a wash with malaria in particular
across the South and even parts of the
Eastern
[Music]
Seaboard the American Revolution was
decided by malaria with the surrender of
corn Wallace at Yorktown he surrenders
because he only has 35% of his troops
left on account of um the Au is what the
the British called Valaria at the time
eight US presidents contracted malaria
George Washington was one of them he was
bled which was one of the crazy cures at
the time he had his first bout at age 17
and had repeat infections throughout his
life at the dawn of the 20th century a
physician of tropical medicine remarked
that the future of humanity would be
decided by one battle man versus
mosquito all right men now we can begin
to fight
during World War II military casualties
from malaria were so high that the
authorities declared Total War even
recruiting Walt Disney for the fight
that a boy dopy killer good and
dead the newly invented insecticide DDT
destroyed mosquito
populations swamps were drained
protection against bites
improved as did the availability of
malaria treatments and
tests in the Western World malaria was
made extinct essentially America was
declared malaria free in 1951 as a
result the malaria burden shifted to
lower socioeconomic countries
specifically in the global
South funding for malaria research was
drastically cut and malaria was
generally all but forgotten and most
wealthy Nations