Time for smart dam design and operation to combat malaria in Africa
Participants in the First Malaria World Congress 2018, held in Melbourne, Australia, will take critical steps this week toward the creation of “a solid framework for collaborative action” against a leading global health problem. Their work will remain incomplete, however, unless it considers a significant but so far neglected approach to help defeat malaria – the way we design and operate dams.
What this opportunity entails and what difference it can make is the subject of a news article on the Global Health Security platform of The Telegraph in the UK and an accompanying opinion piece by Claudia Sadoff, director general of the International Water Management Institute (IWMI). Her views reflects results and insights from eight refereed journal articles published in recent years and summarized in a new IWMI Water Policy Brief, titled “Dams and malaria in Africa: Time for action.” The brief spells out a range of options to reduce the negative impacts of large dams on malaria incidence without compromising their important development benefits.