Uganda's farmers devastated by DDT

BOSCO Acope was a self-made man. Growing up as a child here along the muggy, isolated plains of northern Uganda, life was not easy. His parents were poor. He did not attend secondary school.

Many of his friends died from bouts of malaria, a scourge that has plagued this agrarian society.

Acope, now 49, survived. At 19, he became a small-time farmer, with one acre of land. He married. He sowed. "I have been a farmer in this life," he said.

When the American government, a generous and close friend to Uganda, began an organic farming programme to help rural economies here, Acope expanded, selling a wide variety of commodities at good rates. His one acre became seven. Acope fathered 11 children. Uganda was developing, and Acope was one of many who were riding high.

But the very next year came winds of change. Faced with unrelenting malaria, which threatened both lives and livelihoods, Uganda's government teamed up with the US to use chemical insecticide sprays - including DDT - to try to eliminate the disease. Acope's home district, Apac, which has some of the highest malaria rates in the world, was chosen for spraying in early 2008.

Now, following its devastating effects, Acope is helping to take his own government to court.

Acope said an official from the organic farming company he sold to, which was also supported by the US, warned that the sprays were dangerous. Acope's produce would no longer be guaranteed to be organic - especially since many crops were stored indoors, where the spraying occurred - nor would it be bought at a lucrative price. "I was told to protect my market, to try to stop the spraying," Acope said. "But the whole village was sprayed."

One morning, he recalled, he watched a group of men in gas masks who were carrying metal canisters pass through the village, and just like that, Acope's organic food market was gone. He said he had to pull three of his children out of school. Furthermore, the chemicals in the insecticide lasted so long that the organic farming companies said they would not be back for 15 years. Once condemned as poisonous and inhumane, DDT has staged a recent comeback. In 2006, the World Health Organisation strongly endorsed the chemical's use on indoor walls as a cheap and long-lasting weapon in the fight against malaria. The US also sanctioned DDT to combat the disease in African countries with "a high burden of malaria," including Uganda.

But the US banned the use of DDT in 1972 over the chemical's hazardous environmental impact. Studies have also linked DDT to diabetes and breast cancer. One examination of the consequences of using DDT to fight malaria in sub-Saharan Africa, conducted by the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences, said the chemical might have increased infant deaths.

Still, the risks of not spraying are clear as well. In Africa malaria kills 2,000 children each day, according to Unicef.

"It really affects the whole fabric of the economic system in Africa," said Dr Patrick, a consultant to a US agency for international development initiative to treat malaria. "It prevents people from being productive citizens."

In the Apac region of Uganda, the US focused on two conflicting agendas: developing organic farming and eradicating malaria, ultimately affecting the livelihoods of tens of thousands of farmers.

Now Uganda's constitutional court is expected to hear a case brought by a Ugandan environmental organisation against the government that asserts that officials failed to meet WHO standards for using DDT, including failure to prepare the local population.

The village of Atek is a place where mangoes can be eaten directly from trees and children walk to school shoeless. Farming is a way of life, and the aid agency's organic-farming programme gave the village a competitive edge.

But when the DDT was sprayed, organic-farming companies say they lost the bulk of their supply immediately. An American-owned company, Dunavant, had 50,000 certified organic farmers in areas affected by the spraying, according to the Uganda Network on Toxic Free Malaria Control, the organisation taking the government to court. Shares, another farming company, said at least 16,000 of its suppliers were affected. "All that got lost," said Jan-Alex Fokkens, the director of Shares. "It was game over."

There are questions also as to how well DDT worked in Uganda in the first place. "Mosquitoes had become resistant to the DDT," said Kale Dickinson, a nursing officer at a local health centre. "DDT was not effective."

Underneath a mango tree Acope lamented his own reversal of fortune, but remained stoic. "I am now working on my own," he said. "Still growing."