* Malaria kills more than a million people per year; 90 percent of those who die are African children.
* Every 30 seconds in Africa a child dies of malaria.
* Malaria incapacitates people, keeping countries poor. In addition to the health burden, malaria illness and death cost Africa about $12 billion per year.
Info from Nothing But Nets.
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Last November I slept under a bed-net while in Zimbabwe. It felt so good to know I was protected under this net as mosquito’s swarmed around me.
Today many children in Africa do not have this luxury. It take $10 to purchase a net that could save lives. If you look at the stats above…You will understand the importance of spreading the news.
You can get involved by clicking the link below:
Great strides have been made in many places in the fight against malaria, a disease that kills a million people, most of them children, every year. That’s what World Malaria Day is all about. It draws attention to the many successful ways the war against malaria is being waged, mainly through the distribution of insecticide-treated bed nets and other relatively low-tech preventive measures. Unfortunately, children in the Democratic Republic of Congo remain highly vulnerable.
According to the World Health Organization, less than 1% of DRC children under five years of age sleep under protective nets. This results in most of them suffering six to ten malaria-related fever incidents per year. The disease also accounts for 45% of childhood mortality, which overall runs to 20%. In short, malaria kills nearly one in ten children in the Congo every year.
In Heart of Diamonds, my novel of the Congo, I explore how continuous armed conflict in the country is responsible for many of these deaths. Medical supplies can’t be distributed when roads, railroads, and airstrips have been destroyed. Treatment can’t be delivered by medical personnel who have been chased from their clinics and hospitals. People driven from their homes, plagued by malnutrition, inadequate shelter, and lack of sanitary facilities are weak and less capable of warding off disease. War creates a breeding ground for death by malaria just as surely as swamps full of stagnant water breed anopheles mosquitoes.
Although the intensity of conflict has decreased since the truce of 2003 and democratic elections of 2006, millions of displaced persons still struggle to survive and hot spots remain in the eastern and western provinces. Collapsed infrastructure has severely weakened the health system in the DRC, and the strengthening process is a slow one.
The DRC, unfortunately, has little to celebrate this World Malaria Day.