“Money, Population, and Insecticide Resistance: Why malaria cases haven’t declined since 2015” by Paul SHC

<p> Note: I am not a malaria expert. This is my best-faith attempt at answering a question that was bothering me, but this field is a large and complex field, and I’ve almost certainly misunderstood something somewhere along the way.</p><p><strong> Summary</strong></p><p> While the world made incredible progress in reducing malaria cases from 2000 to 2015, the past 10 years have seen malaria cases stop declining and start rising. I investigated potential reasons behind this increase through reading the existing literature and looking at publicly available data, and I identified three key factors explaining the rise:</p><ol> <li> Population Growth: Africa's population has increased by approximately 75% since 2000. This alone explains most of the increase in absolute case numbers, while cases per capita have remained relatively flat since 2015.</li><li> Stagnant Funding: After rapid growth starting in 2000, funding for malaria prevention plateaued around 2010.</li><li> Insecticide Resistance: Mosquitoes have become increasingly resistant [...]</li></ol> <p>---</p><p><strong>Outline:</strong></p><p>(00:25) Summary</p><p>(02:06) Introduction</p><p>(04:31) Ok, give me the 1 minute rundown on what malaria is and how we fight it?</p><p>(05:22) Preventing malaria has historically meant distributing bednets</p><p>(07:58) There's a lot of good evidence showing that bednets have been effective at preventing malaria</p><p>(09:07) The percent of people with access to bednets and the percent of people sleeping under bednets have both stayed constant or increased since 2015</p><p>(10:47) So what did cause the increase in malaria cases since 2015?</p><p>(11:54) Factor 1: Population increase</p><p>(17:35) Factor 2: Stagnant funding</p><p>(23:21) Factor 3: Insecticide resistance</p><p>(34:23) What are the relative contribution of these three components?</p><p>(38:10) Factors that don't seem to be major contributors</p><p>(38:27) The decline until 2015 and stagnation after do not represent trends in separate countries or regions</p><p>(39:37) Removing PFAS from bednets doesn't appear to have affected experimental hut results</p><p>(44:23) Anopheles stephensi isn't present in the areas with the highest rates of malaria yet</p><p>(45:26) Nobody knows if climate change is making malaria worse</p><p>(47:20) Conclusions</p> <p><i>The original text contained 6 footnotes which were omitted from this narration.</i> </p><p>---</p> <p><b>First published:</b><br/> March 16th, 2025 </p> <p><b>Source:</b><br/> <a href="https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/rxTPv3MdrsHiqK7kM/money-population-and-insecticide-resistance-why-malaria?utm_source=TYPE_III_AUDIO&utm_medium=Podcast&utm_content=Source+URL+in+episode+description&utm_campaign=ai_narration" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/rxTPv3MdrsHiqK7kM/money-population-and-insecticide-resistance-why-malaria</a> </p> <p>---</p> <p>Narrated by <a href="https://type3.audio/?utm_source=TYPE_III_AUDIO&utm_medium=Podcast&utm_content=Narrated+by+TYPE+III+AUDIO&utm_term=ea_forum&utm_campaign=ai_narration" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">TYPE III AUDIO</a>.</p> <p>---</p><div style="max-width: 100%";><p><strong>Images from the article:</strong></p><a href="https://res.cloudinary.com/cea/image/upload/f_auto,q_auto/v1/mirroredImages/rxTPv3MdrsHiqK7kM/wvvged5h62hyhxgv1trd" target="_blank"><img src="https://res.cloudinary.com/cea/image/upload/f_auto,q_auto/v1/mirroredImages/rxTPv3MdrsHiqK7kM/s4f6txng9c0cc5vyvuuu" alt="undefined" style="max-width: 100%;" /></a><hr style="margin-top: 24px; 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