A special guest post from Mark Green at Malaria No More, in honor of World Malaria Day. Green served as Ambassador to Tanzania from 2007 to 2009 and is a former Congressman. He now directs Malaria No More’s Policy Center in Washington, D.C. and serves on several development and educational organization boards.
Sunday, April 25th is World Malaria Day. I’m a blessed man as I’m spending this World Malaria Day in beautiful Tanzania, standing with leaders in their drive to combat this disease.
For too long, malaria has cast a long shadow over Africa. Over two thousand children die each day because of malaria. That’s one child every 40 seconds. Those that manage to survive the disease often face lifelong disabilities and challenges. In a part of the world where there is no government safety net—no Medicaid or disability—hundreds of thousands of families struggle to find ways to care for the sick and disabled.
Tanzania has long been one of the nations hardest hit by malaria. As I look out on Dar Es Salaam, the capital city, I feel both sadness and pride. The pride is because with help from the American people, African leaders have made real progress against malaria in the past few years. The sadness is because malaria still casts a shadow on people I talk to here every day.
The first World Malaria Report, released in 2005, documented that well over a million people died every year from malaria. That number is now estimated to be less than 900,000. Hundreds of thousands of people have been saved by interventions and treatments supported by organizations like the United States President’s Malaria Initiative (PMI), the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis, and Malaria and most importantly, African governments and non-governmental organizations.
This progress is not just progress for Tanzania or Africa—but for the US as well. In a time when the world’s economy has struggled, there are few humanitarian investments that can produce the economic results that ending malaria will. Malaria costs Africa $12 billion a year. Families lose work hours, days at school and disposable income through the affects of this disease.
What most Americans don’t realize is that investments like PMI and the Global Fund aren’t just of benefit to the people of Africa, they also benefit us. When I served as Ambassador to Tanzania and held a “townhall” in a tough area for the US, I was asked by an activist why America “abuses its power?”
I answered that question with one of my own. “What is the number one killer of your children?” The answer was malaria. I then asked him, “Who is doing more than the United States to fight malaria?” The murmurs and nodding of heads spoke volumes on how powerful our foreign assistance work can be diplomatically.
The malaria numbers are changing for the better. Every day more people are being saved from this terrible disease. On World Malaria Day this Sunday, I will be proud to be an American. I’m proud of the difference we’re making in the world. As I often told people when I served as Ambassador, the great untold story in conquering malaria and lifting lives in Africa is the generosity of the American people. There are good people all over the United States who are sending some of their hard earned dollars to people they’ve never met, in places they have never been….all because they care.
Technically a day late, but what the heck. Malaria No More’s Buzzwords blog has some trivia for you in commemoration of Presidents Day: Did you know 8 former US Presidents had malaria? I honestly didn’t.
Find out in the great video below from Malaria Griot partner Elliott Masie, the chair of the Learning CONSORTIUM and an early pioneer in distance learning and e-Learning. To apply for the inaugural program, visit www.one.org/griot.
In West Africa, a Griot is a storyteller, a singer, a history keeper and an agent of cultural change. Echoing this tradition, ONE and Malaria No More are excited to announce the launch of the Malaria Griots Project (beta edition), a program designed to train passionate volunteers into powerful spokespersons in the fight against malaria.
What does it mean to become a Malaria Griot?
Selected Malaria Griots will kick-off their experience with an online course exclusively designed with Elliott Masie, the chair of the Learning CONSORTIUM and an early pioneer in distance learning and e-Learning. This five month, in-depth course—which will be housed on Blackboard Inc.’s online learning ProSitesTM platform—will include live discussions with leading malaria experts, access to cutting-edge articles, and the opportunity to participate in current malaria campaigns. As one of the inaugural students in the Malaria Griots program, you will witness stories of Africans fighting to overcome the disease, work with engaging multimedia content, and ultimately become a leading advocate in the fight against malaria.
Through this interactive course, ONE and Malaria No More will equip you with the tools to be a local advocate in your community, a spokesperson for the media, an engaging presenter at neighborhood church basement meetings and an educator to everyone you meet. We need more Griots working to change lives and help rid the world of disease. This is your opportunity to be a part of the story and to truly make a difference.
What You’ll Do
Successfully complete five month, intensive education course for Griot program
Develop a 12-month outreach and activity plan
Speak at public events about malaria and the work to eradicate the disease
Interact with local media, political leaders and their staffs
Participate in ongoing information sessions via conference call, video chat or in person
Recruit volunteers and other advocates for the malaria cause
What We’re Looking For
Public speaking experience
Ability to learn and navigate new technology; access to computer with audio/video capabilities
Willingness to learn
Persuasive communication skills
Time and travel flexibility within a state or region
Interest in global health and advocacy
Civic interest and understanding
What You’ll Walk Away With
One of the very first students of the Malaria Griot course, a pioneer!
Ability to interact with and learn from leading malaria experts
Unbelievable access to articles, videos, engaging online content
Opportunity to serve as a community leader on life-saving global issue
Opportunity to truly help put an end to malaria worldwide
You can find the application form here (and the PDF version here). Completed forms should be emailed to griot@one.org by January 22.
Yesterday we blogged about Jessica Uno, a junior at Stanford University who is reporting on the ground in Kenya through Malaria No More. In the past few days, Jessica has been posting some terrific and insightful accounts of what she’s seen, including this report from Mwea Mission Hospital.
Excerpts from the post below. You can continue follow Jessica’s trip in real time on MNM’s Buzzwords Blog here.
Once we arrived at Mwea, we met Dr. John, director of the Vector Control Center at Mwea Mission Hospital. The outdoor hospital is four hours away from the next hospital and served a large patient body. The large rice paddies in that region force hospitals to be far apart. Dr. John and Jane told us about how they had reduced malaria occurrences to almost 0% in the area surrounding the hospital, through a combination of prevention and treatment measures. They pushed large campaigns to encourage the community to consistently sleep under pesticide-treated bed nets and made sure powerful ACTs were readily available for those with malaria. A large problem in applying our existing tools for fighting malaria is patient compliance. You can give a bed net to family, but if left alone, families will often misuse them or use them inconsistently. The same goes true with ACTs – often patients feel better after a day or two of treatment and stop taking their medicines. Creative strategies are necessary to motivate consistent net usage and compliance with malaria treatments. One of Mwea’s strategies includes portraying nets as “fashionable,” by having respected community leaders show friends and families that the frequently using nets are critical to avoiding mosquitoes. Malaria is preventable and not a fact of life, using the slogan “mosquito out, we are in the net together!” Rather than imposing the nets on the community, Mwea Mission Hospital was successful in encouraging net use in culturally sensitive, sustainable ways that actively involved community members.
Jessica Uno, a junior at Stanford University, recently won the “World Briefing: Telling the Malaria Story” contest, earning her a spot on the frontlines of the malaria fight. This week, she will be reporting from the 2009 MIM (Multilateral Initiative on Malaria Pan-African) Conference in Nairobi, Kenya.
Jessica will interview malaria experts and journalists; learn about new technologies and approaches to fighting the disease; and travel to a local clinic for an insider’s perspective on the malaria fight. She will report back on her findings and experiences via guest blog posts on our Buzzwords Blog and she’ll be Tweeting regularly from her Malaria No More twitter name, @JunoMNM.
The World Briefing contest is co-sponsored by Malaria No More and Novartis Pharmaceutical Corporation and raises awareness about the race to save lives.
Be sure to check Jessica’s blog posts and follow her on Twitter to get the inside scoop on the latest news and trends from the front-lines of the global effort to end malaria deaths.
Malaria No More’s blog “Buzzwords” picked up this story about a really innovative new way to provide malaria patients with easy access to life-saving anti-malarial medication– through cell phones and text messaging, of course.
Called “SMS for Life”, this pilot project is headed by Roll Back Malaria in collaboration with Vodafone and IBM and seeks to “harness everyday technology to eliminate stock-outs and improve access to essential medicines in sub-Saharan Africa.” By using a combination of mobile phones, SMS messages and electronic mapping technology, “SMS for Life” can enable a more efficient system for tracking and managing medical supplies.
Earlier this week we blogged about other breakthroughs in using cell phones to help fight poverty and disease, something that’s becoming more and more of a trend. Check out “SMS for Life”s website here, and check back on the ONE Blog for further developments on this front.
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