Why should I care about malaria? Radio Public Service Announcement

In the time it takes to read my speech on your radio station, a child will die of a preventable disease called malaria.

Malaria is caused by a microscopic parasite that lives in the stomach and saliva of certain mosquitoes. After an infected mosquito bites someone, the tiny parasites can enter the person’s bloodstream. Within two weeks the person gets sick, with symptoms that resemble a cold at first but can lead to death.

Today, my niece would have celebrated her 30th birthday if she had not died of malaria in Niger. My sister-in-law lost her baby because of malaria. Malaria is a leading killer of children under 5 in Africa. In fact, an African child dies from malaria every 30 seconds.

Malaria kills more than 1 million people every year and each year between 350 million and 500 million people are infected with malaria.

Yet these deaths are preventable, and malaria is treatable!

Malaria is preventable. The easiest and cheapest way to prevent malaria infection is through the use of long-lasting insecticide treated bed-nets (LLINs) which can last up to five years. Bed nets create a protective barrier against mosquitoes. They prevent mosquitoes from biting at night, when the risk is highest.

The nets prevent mosquitoes from biting, and also kill mosquitoes that land on the nets. Let us not forget that a bed net can cover more than one person and can last up to five years. For 10$, we can provide a bed net and the training to go with it. 

Malaria costs Africa at least $12 billion in lost annual GDP. Therefore, if we prevent malaria infection, this money can be used to promote education and school meals in primary schools. 

Malaria can be prevented and treated through a comprehensive approach that involves long-lasting insecticide-treated bed nets, eliminating mosquito breeding areas, selective indoor residual spraying, medicines for treatment, and education. This similar approach had been used by the U.S.A and Panama and it worked. Both countries have eradicated malaria from their land!

Malaria is a resilient foe that continues to kill our children and adults in Africa.

By working together, we can make a difference and we can save lives. Governments, individuals, and different funders of malaria operations in Africa must continue to work closely in order to fight malaria and to eradicate malaria. If we all stay united against malaria, we will win the fight!

Let us not forget that 40% of health resources are used to treat malaria and malaria costs Africa $12 billion annually. Almost 2000 people die in Africa daily from malaria and children under 5 account for 85% of malaria deaths.

Every 45 seconds, a child dies of malaria! It is not acceptable! For just 10$, you and I can provide a life-saving mosquito net to a child at risk, protecting that child from contracting malaria for up to five years.  Remember! Malaria is preventable and treatable.

WHY MALARIA IS AN IMPORTANT AND URGENT ISSUE ?

WHY MALARIA IS AN IMPORTANT AND URGENT ISSUE ?

•    91% of all Malaria deaths occur in Africa
•    85% of malaria victims are young children in Africa
•    Malaria can account for up to 40% of public health expenditures
•    Fighting malaria is key to improving maternal and child health
•    There are 247,000,000 annual cases of malaria worldwide
•    Every 45 seconds a child dies of malaria
•    Trials of insecticide-treated mosquito nets have found that they reduce child mortality by 20%
•    Mosquito nets are highly cost-effective, as cost-effective as measles immunization
•    Malaria No More has distributed 2.6 million mosquito nets in 13 African countries to cover over 5,000,000 people
•    Malaria No More stands as a case study of how aid can change
•    Malaria costs Africa at least $12 billion in lost annual GDP
•    Malaria affects 5 of the 8 Millennium Development Goals
•    In 11 African countries, childhood mosquito net use has increased 10x in the past decade

Letter to Members of Congress Urging them to take interest and action on MALARIA

I am the mother of two boys (21 and 17) and I live in Cotonou, Republic of Benin (West Africa). I am a middle school and a high school teacher at the English International School.

I am enrolled in the Malaria Griots Project launched by One. The spring 2012 group of Griots is one of the most diverse groups we have ever had with passionate advocates from all around the world and we are committing to be One voice to make MALARIA NO MORE!

I am writing to urge you to support the progress which has been made in the fight against malaria. 

As President George W. Bush stated in 2007 proclaiming April 25th as World Malaria day, “as a compassionate nation, we are called to spread awareness about malaria…and we are called to act. That’s what compassionate people do. When they see a problem, they act.” 

As president Obama stated before the Ghanian Parliament, “We are called to act by our conscience but also by our common interest, because when a child dies of a preventable disease in Accra, that diminishes us everywhere. And when disease goes unchecked in any corner of the world, we know that it can spread across oceans and continents.”

Under the National Malaria Eradication Program, malaria was eliminated from the United States in 1951. If we get the necessary help from the U.S, similar success can be achieved in Sub-Saharan Africa.

According to Dr. David Bowen, CEO of Malaria No More, malaria must be eradicated in Africa for the following reasons: (1) Malaria hurts macroeconomic growth in Africa; (2) Malaria is imposing costs on families that are already living on the very edge of survival; (3) Malaria negatively impacts childhood cognitive development.

We must tell the U.S. Government that saving lives from malaria is their priority just as the President’s Malaria Initiative was started by George W. Bush in 2005 to protect women and children in Africa form malaria.

We must tell congress that malaria kills and that simple actions like nets can save lives!

I know you share my desire to help end malaria in the world. I am writing to urge you to take action and not to cut the international programs that fight malaria in the fiscal year 2012 budget.

WHAT will end Malaria deaths?

Trying to eradicate malaria may be less beneficial than trying to control it! It is indeed important for the U.S. to invest in malaria control because “an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.” 

Today’s best weapon against malaria is the mosquito nets! Long-lasting insecticide-treated mosquito nets last up to five years and act as a first line of defense. The mosquito nets create a barrier against mosquitoes at night and they also kill the mosquito on contact.

Long-lasting insecticide treated bed nets (LLINs) are the fastest way to prevent malaria infection. In the war against malaria, the U.S. must invest in foreign aid which will help African countries to spread insecticide treated nets.

Malaria killed 655,000 people in 2010. Ninety-one percent of malaria-related deaths occur in Africa, the majority of whom are children under 5 years of age. Most of these deaths are in sub-Saharan Africa, and in areas of high malaria risk, there are an average of two malaria-related deaths per minute. 

 Malaria costs Africa $12 billion annually and in Africa, 40% of health resources are used to treat malaria! In the 21st century, malaria is not acceptable! We must work together in order to control the disease. 

It takes more than a village to fight malaria! Ending deaths malaria requires the following: U.S. foreign aid, African governments being more responsible, the NGOs, and individuals, like you and me, to educate families and communities about the effectiveness of distributing nets. 

Education is the key to prevention! We must educate people about how to use the nets and why the nets work and how to follow up to make sure the nets have been correctly installed.

To fight malaria, we need insecticide-treated nets because we all know how mosquito netting treated with insecticide is aiding the battle against malaria!

Malaria is one of the world's most demanding public health problems. It kills around 1 million people a year and of an estimated 247 million cases of malaria in 2006, 86 percent were in Africa. Therefore, we need all the help we can get in order eliminate this elusive and ever changing killer disease from our ancient African nation!

According to Pedro Alonso, from the University of Barcelona, who led a study using data from 8,000 children and infants in Tanzania, Mozambique, Gabon and Ghana, "controlling malaria is not about using one tool or another," he said. "It is about using all the tools that we have now, and new tools that we can develop, to reduce the intolerable burden of this disease."

According to David Schellenberg of the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, “insecticide-treated mosquito nets were a mainstay of prevention.”

Separately, the U.S. Academy for Educational Development reported  that a 10-year-long U.S. government funded mosquito net project in Africa had helped deliver 50 million bed nets to people in seven countries for free or at partial cost. The project had also created enough incentives for private companies to decide to invest $88 million to expand their mosquito net businesses.

Mosquito netting is one of the safest and simplest ways to avoid this dangerous disease, malaria! It is said that Cleopatra, Queen of Egypt, slept under a mosquito net. There is no doubt that mosquito nets are an important part of malaria prevention and as we said earlier, “an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.”

Therefore, we need to put all our efforts on spreading mosquito nets around regions which suffer from this killer disease. If we educate people about the importance of bed nets, we can get rid of half the malaria deaths in Africa. We must reduce malaria by distributing long-lasting insecticide-insecticide treated nets.

According to the World Health Organization, insecticide-treated mosquito nets can reduce malaria infections by about 50 percent and cut child deaths from the disease by about 20 percent. The nets are effective because malaria-transmitting mosquitoes in Africa are generally active at night.

We must never forget that malaria causes more than a million deaths a year and kills an African child every 30 seconds!

UNICEF: Malaria testing and treatment in Ethiopia

"JANGWA, Ethiopia, 25 November 2009 A steady flow of parents and children make their way to the Jangwa Health Post in Dembia District, seeking treatment for malaria. The rainy season has recently ended, creating ideal breeding conditions for malaria-bearing mosquitoes here in Ethiopias Amhara region.

Two health extension workers, Mantegbosh and Alemtsehay, sit outside the wattle-and-daub health post, testing villagers for the Falciparum plasmodium, a dangerous strain of malaria found in Ethiopia. They use UNICEF-supplied rapid diagnostic test kits and treat their patients with drugs supplied by UNICEF.

In partnership with members of the Roll Back Malaria initiative, UNICEF has been working with the Government of Ethiopia to cut malarial morbidity and mortality in half by 2010, and another 50 per cent by 2015.

Since 2005, UNICEF Ethiopia has helped to distribute about 20 million insecticide-treated bed nets in malaria prone-districts such as Dembia. Health extension workers make sure that the nets are used properly and that stagnant pools, where mosquitoes breed, are drained."

Sustainable Development

Growing populations and industrialization have made environmental pollution a big problem around the world!

In this picture, you can see a "gohoto" woman who goes door-to-door buying plastic bottles and all kind of containers to recycle them. In Rep of Benin, we have thousands of women who do this recycling job.

Cleaning up the trash of a "throw away," consumer society, in addition to its industrial waste, is technologically challenging! 

As I told my students, environmental degradation is not unique to the 21st century. 

The Roman Empire, for example, deforested large expanses of Africa and western Asia, and later Westerners have decimated or eliminated countless animals and plant species! 

The Thames River, which intersects London, was used as the main sewage dump for one of the largest cities in the world! The stench from the river was so terrible that members of Parliament could smell the pollution from their open windows!

In the mid-twentieth century, the river emptying into Lake Erie from Cleveland, Ohio, was so polluted from industrial waste that it actually caught fire!!

Driven by poverty many poor countries in the poor South have accepted chemical and industries that have not been accepted in the rich northern nations.

We must call for stricter regulations or the outright banning of such operations! 

Risks of long-term health problems and pollution or starvation of our families....are these the only choices left..

A poor South which already struggles with rapid population growth, high unemployment, and the need for EDUCATION, people fleeing the countryside in search of a greener side, in search of better lives in urban areas, or emigrate,....often illegally to seek jobs...

We need to find solutions to our environmental problems. We need to adopt a national system of soil and water conservation!! 


We need to fight for environmental protection, poverty reduction and human development. We need to mobilize the students worldwide on issues of sustainable development.