Inherited Without History? Maldive Fever and Its Aftermath

Abstract

Highlighting the human evolutionary adaptation process to malaria-causing parasites, this article draws an arc from a legendary malady in the historical past to thalassaemia as a pressing contemporary health issue in the Republic of Maldives. This small archipelago, lying at the crossroads of the Indian Ocean World maritime trade routes, has the world’s highest rate of a care-intensive inherited blood disorder (beta-thalassaemia). With its current focus on genetic risk, public health discourse in the Maldives is turning the tropical paradise islands into a thalassaemia risk-alert social world. This discourse, however, does not offer a causative explanation for the archipelago’s exceptional thalassaemia burden. Knoll investigates European and Arab historical reports of the “Maldive fever”, a malady that most scholars assume to have been malaria.