The recent nod on the use of DDT announced by Dr. Arata Kochi was a big plus to democracy. The new head of the World Health Organization’s malaria program issued guidelines that underscore the major role that DDT and other insectides will again play in preventing malaria.

Choice is a fundamental hallmark of democracy. Ironically, it has all along been stifled by developed countries, most of which are democratic, when it touches their relationship with developing countries.

It is in partial recognition of the  independence of choice that Jose Manuel Barroso admits that the European union fully supports the right and responsibility of countries to use DDT and other appropriate malaria control techniques,  under the  Stockholm convention and WHO guidelines. 

Although WHO has finally given a nod to the use of DDT, it should not go scot free. This will be tantamount to freeing instigators of the Rwanda genocide unconditionally. 

In Kenya alone, 34,000 children die annually from malaria, says Charity Ngilu, Minister for Health. Dr. Stephen Malinge, her counterpart from Uganda records even higher death tolls of 100 000 per year. 

Upto 2 million people in Africa die of malaria each year. The continents Gross National Product would be over $ 400 billion a year If malaria had been wiped out. The disease costs the continent $ 12 billion annually, depleting budgets for other programs and sliding the continent to aid dependency. 

The withholding of DDT from the market has kept millions of Africans from work, hence deteriorating productivity. It has kept children and teachers from school hence lowering academic standards. It has led to cerebral illnesses hence not only killing think tanks in the continent, but also disabling the ability to think out of the box.

It is with this in mind, that the lifting on the ban should not be received as final. It is no time to celebrate yet.

The EPA, which originally imposed the DDT ban in the US in 1972, has a case to answer. The WHO, whose review of the chemical in 1979 failed to find any possible adverse effect of its use and deemed it the “safest pesticide used for residual spraying in vector control programmes” yet did nothing to lift the ban has a case to answer.

The United Nations Environmental Programme; World Bank; Green Peace; Pesticide Action Network; World Wildlife Fund; Physicians for Social Responsibility and other groups that designed coercive treaties and threats of economic sanctions, adamantly opposing the use of DDT have a case to answer. 

Africa should quantify the damage incurred from the ban and take the responsible nations and bodies to the international Court of Justice for redress and compensation. If democracy really respects choice and rule of law, it is time Africa was compensated.