ABSTRACT
Most people at West Africa Rice Development Association (WARDA) seem to regard malaria as a manageable occupational hazard. Casting its cooperative net wider, WARDA and its partners embarked on an effort to appraise the consequences of agricultural development for human health. By taking a role in the consortium, WARDA was venturing outside the normal boundaries for an agricultural research center. Because of development agencies' funding patterns, there has been little interaction between researchers in different sectors such as health and agriculture. Thomas Teuscher says that in 1994 he heard that WARDA was looking for someone to manage a new health project and was tempted. The Tanzanian center was located on an inundated plain where rice was cultivated and during Teuscher's time there work was done on the efficacy of malaria interventions and on rapid mapping of schistosomiasis morbidity in order to allocate treatment resources.
