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300 million children face mortality each year due to malaria,

a highly preventable disease that had wreaked enormous devastation in Africa

because the most effective agent against the spread of malaria,

the pesticide DDT, had been banned due to environmental concerns.

After 30 years of opposition, the World Health Organization has reversed his policies and is now pushing for indoor spraying of DDT to control malaria. Richard Trent, director of Africa fighting malaria and co-author of the Cato study South Africa's War Against

Malaria, Lessons for the Developing World, joins us over the phone to discuss this long

overdue policy reversal.

What kind of toll in terms of economic effects and human lives

has malaria taken in Africa?

Well, malaria causes over a million deaths every year in Africa and those are mostly young children and

pregnant women and there are over half a billion cases of malaria every

year so although the death rate is quite low the human told is enormous you know people even if

you're not just sick for for up to two weeks and often unable to work and it's

those productivity costs

Africa over $12 billion.

That's not just in terms of lost productivity, but also in terms of lost

productivity but also in terms of reduced investment.

Investors are often skittish about putting their money in places where a disease like

...