Halting malaria in Africa: Children helping children

By Anne K Walters Dec 15, 2006, 4:25 GMT

Washington - A 15-year-old Kenyan girl writes of watching her best friend's mother die of malaria.

The woman could not afford medicine or a doctor and was survived by an orphaned child who was then adopted by her friend's family.

'Now, not only is she my friend, but she is my sister,' Rita Githiaka wrote in an essay shared with participants at the White House Summit on Malaria Thursday in Washington.

The death is one of more than 1 million a year, mostly of African children under 5, from the preventable disease contracted through the bite of infected mosquitoes.

'If a soft drink can get to the farthest corner of the world, why can't we get our drugs and our bed nets?' Margaret Chan, incoming director of the World Health Organization, asked the gathering of government, business and charitable leaders from the United States and Africa.

US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said, 'The child suffering from malaria in Africa has the same value as the most powerful among us.'

A recent Gallup survey showed Americans are unaware of the severity of the problem and rank malaria last among a long list of world health problems, even though it kills more people in some parts of Africa than HIV-AIDS. Activists hope to raise awareness in the US of the preventable disease and the havoc it wrecks on African communities.

The newly formed organization Malaria No More hopes that American children will identify with African children and help to raise money to purchase mosquito nets to halt the spread of the disease.

Their push includes a picture book for school children in the United States, titled Nets Are Nice, urging readers and their parents to help buy inexpensive mosquito nets for their peers in Africa to halt the spread of the disease.

Some children are already getting involved in the campaign, and the White House honoured a South African children's choir for its work bringing attention to the disease and a Washington school for its anti-malaria fundraising efforts.

In addition, the Boys and Girls Clubs of America, an organization that serves disadvantaged youth, is working with its chapters to raise money for bed nets.

Teenagers from a club in Newark, New Jersey shared how they had started a website and posted a video online to draw attention to the plight of African children dying of malaria. They have raised 1,200 dollars, enough to purchase 120 nets.

Because students can pay for a mosquito net with only 10 dollars, it is easy for them to visualize what they are doing, Roxanne Spillett, the organization's president, said in an interview.

'When you raise 100 dollars you saved 10 lives,' she said. 'It's so inspiring that a kid can do that.'

Organizations ranging from oil company ExxonMobil Corp to the world's richest charity, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, used the conference to announce increases in their contribution to anti- malaria efforts for sleeping nets, indoor insect spraying and medications for ill patients.

US President George W Bush urged European nations to pour more money into the fight against the disease.

Bush touted his pledge to spend 1.2 billion dollars on anti- malaria measures in 15 African countries, saying the illness costs sub-Saharan Africa an estimated 12 billion dollars a year.

'We know exactly what it takes to prevent and treat the disease,' Bush told the meeting. 'Now is the time to act. Allowing Africa to continue on that path is just simply unacceptable.'

Bush's five-year initiative, launched last year, aims at cutting malaria by half in 15 hard-hit African countries with the help of government and private money from rich countries and aid agencies.

Countries already participating in the initiative have seen dramatic results. After 230,000 bed nets were distributed in the Zanzibar region of Tanzania, malaria cases dropped by 87 per cent.

'Think what it would mean to the people of my country,' regional Health Minister Said Mohamed Saleh Jiddawi said, 'to eliminate all these deaths and suffering.'