The developmental effects of disease burden in tropical environments, and how to prevent them?

[manitobot]

First some context: The eradication of diseases has been one of the triumphs of the modern era, and as humanity progresses attention has turned to various tropical diseases as future targets for elimination. Compared to diseases like HIV, malaria, and tuberculosis; neglected tropical diseases are overshadowed in global health. There have been advances in combatting the spread and transmission of these diseases but many of these solutions have been developed and pioneered with modern technology (medicine cocktails, vaccines, gene therapy) - mass deworming for example employs preventative chemotherapy; ending vector transmission involves high-grade logistics of insecticides; and though the disease certainly isn't neglected in research it has taken a considerable amount of time to end the presence of malaria in tropical areas.

Now, the premise. We know these effects are deleterious to society. The disease burden can be assessed by WHO to cost years of life and billions in economic productivity and expenses. More generally, and I think this is pretty probable these diseases could have possibly held back societal development in areas like Sub-Saharan Africa compared to other regions like continental Europe, or are the big historical effects more muddled? Secondly, how can we prevent or reduce the spread and scope of disease burden historically in these tropical environments, maybe to the extent of creating conditions more conducive to civilizations in these areas? Any POD would do, though I am primarily looking for things humans can affect not necessarily environmental changes; ie pre-modern solutions to better combat these diseases.

TLDR: How do I decrease the disease burden in areas like Sub-Saharan Africa, or altogether make neglected tropical diseases less of an issue for development and civilization compared to other regions of the world?

 

[Gloss]

More generally, and I think this is pretty probable these diseases could have possibly held back societal development in areas like Sub-Saharan Africa compared to other regions like continental Europe, or are the big historical effects more muddled?

I personally think this is over-stated, most data I can find on infant mortality rate show a similar pictures for most regions in the world, most environments have their own set of challenges and while they might not be completely equal it's hard to really show a significant long term impact or differences caused by it.

 

[manitobot]

I personally think this is over-stated, most data I can find on infant mortality rate show a similar pictures for most regions in the world, most environments have their own set of challenges and while they might not be completely equal it's hard to really show a significant long term impact or differences caused by it.

Well, then could it be argued the other way that maybe non-tropical regions found ways that made it easier to treat the diseases common to their environment first before tropical areas did?

If each environment had their own set of challenges, are there anyways that diseases could be treated faster ATL?

 

[RonaldReagram]

The tsetse fly is one of the worst culprits, because it degrades not just human physical health, but limits farmland exploitation and causes learning difficulties/mental instability. Extirpate it, and you improve both the food supply and education quality, taking the edge off of societal instability in the long run.

As for how to actually accomplish that, it could be as simple as a wealthier and more stable state in the mid-20th century like Ethiopia or Ghana tugging at a great power/the UN's sleeve and politely asking for funding and training specifically for this extermination. Around that same time, scientists started figuring out that they could achieve population control of flying pests by taking tons of males, zapping them to sterility with x-rays, and releasing them to fruitlessly mate with wild females.

 

[manitobot]

The tsetse fly is one of the worst culprits, because it degrades not just human physical health, but limits farmland exploitation and causes learning difficulties/mental instability. Extirpate it, and you improve both the food supply and education quality, taking the edge off of societal instability in the long run.

As for how to actually accomplish that, it could be as simple as a wealthier and more stable state in the mid-20th century like Ethiopia or Ghana tugging at a great power/the UN's sleeve and politely asking for funding and training specifically for this extermination. Around that same time, scientists started figuring out that they could achieve population control of flying pests by taking tons of males, zapping them to sterility with x-rays, and releasing them to fruitlessly mate with wild females.

Is it possible to eliminate tsetse fly earlier?

 

[Janrey]

Avoiding the DDT ban would do wonders.

 

[Nivek]

Avoiding the DDT ban would do wonders.

Jake the snake Roberts would Approve

 

[Arkenfolm]

Avoiding the DDT ban would do wonders.

Likely not as much as you'd think since DDT resistance has appeared in mosquitoes.

 

[Hendric]

grow chinchona trees all over africa. they have quinin which treats malaria.

 

[Simreeve]

It turns out (according to serious research on an a phenomenon already reported anecdotally) that, given the choice between people who have been eating Marmite and people who haven't, mosquitos definitely favour the latter as prey...

 

[cerebus]

You could argue that tropical diseases protected local cultures from conquest by europeans for about 450 years……..

 

[Arkenfolm]

grow chinchona trees all over africa. they have quinin which treats malaria.

The problem is they're only native to a small and remote portion of the Peruvian Amazon. Historically the Spanish closely guarded the secret, and the government of Peru tried to as well before corruption inevitably set in and trees were smuggled out.

So I guess you'd need either sheer luck (a few corrupt officials) to have the trees smuggled out in, say, the late 16th century and then spread to Africa, probably by slave traders. It might be fairly finnicky to grow given the tree didn't spread much within South America (i.e. from village to village) even after malaria appeared despite being a useful antimalarial. However, if established, it would probably be an integral part of the plantation economy given how malaria was one of many diseases that decimated whites involved in the slave trade and to a lesser degree decimated the slaves themselves.

 

[Hendric]

what about azolla. Azolla blocks many mosquito larvae from rising to the surface, lowering the chance of malaria. Azolla is a floating aquatic plant which helps shade the water the rice is in to shade out competition. It's also unique in that it maintains a symbiotic relationship with a nitrogen fixing bacteria which means it fixes its own nitrogen, and in fact enriches the paddy environment as a whole. It's also super high in protein by dry weight, and while not particularly edible or palatable to humans, it makes great animal feed since it grows crazy fast (doubling in size every couple days) and can be harvested regularly for animal fodder. The rice and azolla together pretty much eliminate the need for fertilizer or rotation on a rice paddy since the azolla fixes most of the nutrients needed by rice, so it allows for more productive use of the paddy and allows for up to 2 rice crops in a year. Apperently its native to africa so it could help the rice growing areas of africa.

Azolla - Wikipedia

en.m.wikipedia.org

 

[Hendric]

honestly the best bet is to have some tropical insects like the tse tse fly and tropical diseases like sleeping sickness among others not to have ever existed in the first place. But thats ASB

 

[manitobot]

Thank you very much for the ideas presented, it is extremely interesting.

 

[Domz]

You'd definitely have to get rid of jungles. Jungles limited the population density on Mainland Southeast Asia for centuries, being five to ten times less than the population density of India and China in the pre-modern period. (Baker and Phongpaichit, A History of Ayutthaya). You got malarial insects coupled with carnivores such as tigers and elephants roaming about, which seems to be a universal situation in the regions of the world close to the tropics. Human settlement in these regions were therefore confined to river valleys and the sparse plains regions of the area yet despite this, Southeast Asia had its fair share of great polities (just like in Africa) in its history (Khmer, Majapahit, Bagan, Ayutthaya, Dai Viet). Trade and proximity to the major powers of India and China must've helped the region's development and wealth just as well, although I think Africa just got unlucky due to its proximity with Europe). Don't quote me on this (I'm using Wikipedia for this factoid) but during the First-Anglo Burmese Wars, one of the British armies fighting against the militaristic Konbaung dynasty of Burma (who in the past 60 years fought a successful series of defensive wars against Qing China (1765-69), terrorized and subjugated its powerful neighbors such as Ayutthaya (1767), and was even sending armies over the snowy Himalaya foothills into conquer the British Indian vassal state of Assam in the 1820s (Lieberman, Strange Parallels in Southeast Asia (Volume I)) apparently experienced casualty rates similar to what they experienced in the Napoleonic Wars, despite that the Brits were able to conquer Lower Burma and levy massive reparations onto Konbaung Burma, from which it was to permanently cripple Burma until it's final annexation by the British sixty years later. In Thailand, while the clearing of jungles began in the 18th century with the rise of its own peasant economy (resulting in the iconic paddyfield flat landscapes of Thailand and throughout the rest of Southeast Asia, replacing the sea of forests and trees that used to be seen virtually everywhere), as late as the 1970s, it was still common to find untouched forests throughout the country.

I think you also just have to somehow increase Chinese-Indian-mercantile Europeans' (Dutch, Portuguese) interests in Africa centuries earlier in order for the African states technologically progress further than it had OTL (somewhat like in the Lands of Red and Gold TL).

I wish I could say something about rice, Southeast Asia's food staple, but I can't (and I know its an important aspect of Southeast Asia)

 

[Hendric]

another option is the earlier and more widespread use of the guinaefowl. they are rlly good at getting rid of ticks. They play a pivotal role in the control of ticks, flies, locusts, scorpions, and other invertebrates. They pluck maggots from carcasses and manure. Farmers in north america used guinaefowl to make their farms tick free, saving lots of cash.