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!