The Making of a Tropical Disease PDF

Rating: Author: Randall M. Packard ISBN : Product Detai New from Format: PDF

Direct download links available PRETITLE The Making of a Tropical Disease (Johns Hopkins Biographies of Disease) [Kindle Edition] POSTTITLE from mediafire, rapishare, and mirror link Malaria sickens hundreds of millions of people and kills one to three million each year. Despite massive efforts to eradicate the disease, it remains a major public health problem in poorer tropical regions. But malaria has not always been concentrated in tropical areas. How did other regions control malaria and why does the disease still flourish in some parts of the globe? From Russia to Bengal to Palm Beach, Randall Packard's far-ranging narrative traces the natural and social forces that help malaria spread and make it deadly. He finds that war, land development, crumbling health systems, and globalization coupled with climate change and changes in the distribution and flow of water create conditions in which malaria's carrier mosquitoes thrive. The combination of these forces, Packard contends, makes the tropical regions today a perfect home for the disease. Authoritative, fascinating, and eye-opening, this short history of malaria concludes with policy recommendations for improving control strategies and saving lives.Direct download links available for PRETITLE The Making of a Tropical Disease (Johns Hopkins Biographies of Disease) [Kindle Edition] POSTTITLE

• Product Details
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• File Size: 1183 KB
• Print Length: 320 pages
• Publisher: JHUP; 1 edition (December 29, 2010)
• Sold by: Amazon Digital Services, Inc.
• Language: English
• ASIN: B004MYGTBY
• Text-to-Speech: Enabled
• X-Ray:
  Not Enabled
• Lending: Not Enabled
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #400,760 Paid in Kindle Store (See Top 100 Paid in Kindle Store)
  • #8 in Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > Nonfiction > Professional & Technical > Medical eBooks > Internal Medicine > Infectious Disease > Tropical Medicine
  • #28 in Books > Medical Books > Medicine > Internal Medicine > Infectious Disease > Tropical Medicine
• #8 in Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > Nonfiction > Professional & Technical > Medical eBooks > Internal Medicine > Infectious Disease > Tropical Medicine
• #28 in Books > Medical Books > Medicine > Internal Medicine > Infectious Disease > Tropical Medicine

The Making of a Tropical Disease PDF

Once upon a time there was a mosquito. And this mosquito carried something with her and gave it to everyone she met. Men in peculiar outfits sprayed all over the land, and the mosquito was banished, in that land at least.

This is the story of malaria. The story that I've heard.

But the actual story of Malaria is a lot more complex. Who would have, for instance, expected a history on a supposed tropical disease to begin with a study of a city in Northern Russia? The Making of a Tropical Disease does just that.

Honestly, this isn't always a fun book to read. Some books are very good about inspiration and motivation and glide along in presenting the chosen perspective. This isn't about inspiration or motivation. It is more ambitious. There are times in which it slows down and gets into details and spends a long time one what might seem a minor point. But, this negative isn't really a criticism. These seemingly minor points are in fact important, and it is the tendency to gloss over such points that undermine so many attempts to respond.

This certainly is a well written book. Randall Packard is a very good writer, and even with my above comment I must add he does a wonderful job of making personal connection. In his journey through the history of where malaria spread he does not only relate facts and figures. He tells a story, and in telling that story has written a very, very solid history.

But more than a history The Making of a Tropical Disease is also really a book on global policy. Packard does not hide this fact. He is making the point that malaria is not simply a story about random mosquitoes who live in unfortunate places.

Dr. Randall M. Packard (Ph.D. not M.D.) did a vast amount of research to provide the reader with a daunting scenario - that malaria is a disease on the rise within the world and worse than that it has returned with a vengeance! The author writes an authoritative and masterful book capturing a great deal of information although he modeslty adds "a short history of malaria" on the title page of his book. The fact is, malaria is a *global* disease which although confined *mostly* to the tropics, has also developed elsewhere in northern climates when the conditions are right. The author captures the reader's attention from the first chapter by providing three global narratives which illustrate the complex factors involved in why malaria persists as a worldwide menacing disease. The first example illustrates how changing agricultural and economic factors in Archangel, a northern port city of Russia, about 125 miles from the Arctic Circle, in the 1920s, created the conditions for an unlikely tropical disease to strike a population not considered at risk. Due to the Russian Revolution, farming techniques changed with a vast decrease in production. There were meager food reserves and live stock was scarce. The Bolsheviks confiscated produce or destroyed much of the previous harvest and animals. Factories closed, shipping was halted and famine arose. First there was a drought followed by a flood. The conditions were ripe for the local species of anopheles mosquito to breed. A Western blockade of shipping prevented the poverty stricken starving people from obtaining quinine, the only medicine known to be effective against malaria. A local epidemic arose which was part of a larger regional epidimic hitting Central Asia, the Caucasus, and Volga Regions.