What’s All the Buzz About?
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This week, global leaders of public health, business, and government will descend on Seattle for the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation Global Malaria Forum.
Normally, a gathering of the technocratic jet set is not the stuff of headlines. But this meeting promises to be more than just Power Points and plenaries. The ONE Campaign and Malaria No More are teaming up to bring you the inside scoop through a series we’re calling “Gates Crashing: Blogging the Gates Malaria Forum.”
Why all the fuss? Malaria control is at a tipping point; there’s a growing sense that we may be able to scratch this public health crisis off the list. For the first time in a generation, experts and advocates are using the word “elimination” with a straight face.
It won’t be easy, of course. Malaria has been around as long as mankind (probably longer) and it continues to quietly kill a million people a year, mostly kids and pregnant women in Africa. I say quietly because the world is so inured to this tragedy that it rarely merits a mention in the developed world.
But there’s plenty of cause for hope, and the Gates forum will be equal parts progress report and pep rally. UNICEF will release findings of its new “Malaria and Children” report; Ministers of Health for Zambia and Ethiopia, two of Africa’s most dramatic success stories, will update the world on their work; there are even rumblings about a major announcement in the hunt for a malaria vaccine.
For those of us in the malaria-fighting business, the highlight will be the keynote from Bill & Melinda Gates. This power couple for the powerless has done as much as anyone to put malaria on the agenda, adding a whiff of entrepreneurial possibility to the stale air of public health debate.
Join us Tuesday through Thursday at www.ONE.org/blog for dispatches from the frontlines of the fight against malaria. Until then…
-Martin Edlund, Malaria No More
Malaria No More’s mission is simple: no more deaths from malaria. Learn more and help prevent a million child deaths this year by donating a $10 bed net at www.MalariaNoMore.org.
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October 16, 2007 at 7:41 am
You are a keen and accurate observer. Your prose on malaria is quite evocative … reminiscent of an explorer of old who described bouts of malaria in his writings while traversing the interior of central and southern Africa, and the Zambezi and its tributaries. You haven’t blogged recently though. Are you lost?