Product Demonstration
The World If… malaria drugs stop working
- A high-season epidemic is predicted to cause nearly universal childhood infection from severe malaria fever, potentially affecting 10% of a continent's population simultaneously and triggering societal collapse alongside a 20 million new case surge.
- Drug resistance evolved through Darwinian selection in Southeast Asia in 2016 is expected to spread globally via air travel within a decade, making it difficult for scientists to develop effective treatments for at least 10 years.
- Widespread resistance will lead to increased treatment failure rates, recurrent illness, and a slow overall rise in malaria cases that could reverse African self-sufficiency gains and cost states over $12 billion annually in lost productivity.
- Agricultural output and school attendance are projected to decline significantly as millions of children suffer from debilitating fever, placing immense pressure on health systems to the point of buckling.
- Governments are expected to utilize foreign aid to procure 6 million mosquito nets for entire populations while the global community seeks to control the disease, reduce deaths, and target specific regions for eradication.
- Future mitigation strategies will integrate diagnostics, drugs, bed nets, insecticides, and a potential second-generation vaccine with higher efficacy to protect non-vaccinated individuals from transmission.
- Genetically engineered male mosquitoes are anticipated to significantly impact control efforts by reducing mosquito populations when offspring inherit lethal genes and color markers, though this neutralization process is expected to be slow relative to the epidemic's pace.
- Despite the urgency, a window of opportunity is expected to exist through 2015 to utilize current techniques to eliminate malaria before the situation escalates beyond control.