In 1972, poet Thomas Lux wrote, “Listen…someone is at the door./Yes…it’s my malaria./Get ready to meet a monster.” More than thirty years after these lines were penned, malaria is still at the door, killing well over one million people per year—many of them women and very young children, most of whom live in tropical, impoverished areas whose conditions hasten the disease’s spread. In these communities, malaria is a very real monster, knocking constantly.
It is with great excitement, then, that Freedom from Hunger announces the approach of the Fourth MIM Pan-African Malaria Conference (November 13-18) and the Roll Back Malaria Partnership’s Forum V (November 18-19). Freedom from Hunger is presenting the progress of its Malaria Initiative at the conference to demonstrate that groups of very poor women can take a lead role in fighting malaria in their own communities. Freedom from Hunger’s presentation—as well as the initiative itself—is underwritten by GlaxoSmithKline.
The Plague in Poverty
To implement the Initiative, Freedom from Hunger is working with its network of rural banks and other microfinance providers. With training from Freedom from Hunger, field staff act as effective change-agents to support national malaria control strategies recommended by ministries of health.
The Malaria Initiative is a part of Freedom from Hunger’s proven Credit with Education service. It provides women with information, encouragement to change health practices, linkages to health services and access to insecticide-treated bednets Micro-loans help women start or diversify home-based businesses and improve household income. The education sessions are held at weekly meetings when the women gather to repay their micro-loans and deposit savings in personal accounts. The simultaneous gains in information, access and increased earning power have a powerful and synergistic effect on the women’s ability to fight malaria.
These strategies are imperative because, “There is a silent tsunami under way all the time in rural Africa. Every month, as many children die of malaria in Africa as died in the tsunami – about 150,000 children dying every month. And yet malaria is a largely preventable and utterly treatable disease. It’s preventable by something as simple as a mosquito bed net that’s impregnated with insecticide.” Dr. Jeffery Sachs director of the U.N. Millennium Project, Columbia University Economist.
Practical Solutions
Insecticide-treated bednets are unequivocally recognized as the single most effective preventative measure malaria-ravaged communities can adopt to prevent the spread of the disease. The Malaria Initiative makes a practical matter of this fact, providing not only the information but the bednets themselves, veritable lifelines offered at a drastically reduced cost so as to make what would otherwise be a prohibitive expense—these are women, after all, who struggle to put food on their table—an attainable tool.
Education focuses first and foremost on those most vulnerable: pregnant women and children under the age of five. In addition to strategies to prevent malaria infection, lessons teach women how to recognize malaria when it strikes, how to prepare dosages and how to initiate action throughout the community to prevent the disease.
The Malaria Initiative, as part of the larger Credit with Education program, will be a fully self-sustainable resource once the three-year pilot term has ended, layered as it is into the already-existing structures established through local area banks and credit unions. The women electing to take part in the multifaceted program will cover the program’s local costs with earnings generated through their loan repayments. No short-term salvo, this landmark initiative with its twin tools of education and practical application will, with a series of brisk clicks, deadbolt the doors of homes across Africa against the monster malaria and the devastation it spreads.
To read more about our Malaria Initiative visit our Web site:
http://www.freefromhunger.org/malaria.html
About Freedom from Hunger
Freedom from Hunger is an international development organization working in sixteen countries across the globe. Our Mission is to bring innovative and sustainable self-help solutions to the fight against chronic hunger and poverty. Together with local partners, we equip families with resources they need to build futures of health, hope and dignity. Freedom from Hunger is a nonprofit, nongovernmental, non-sectarian organization classified by the IRS as a 501(c)(3) charity.
To learn more about Freedom from hunger visit our Web site: http://www.freefromhunger.org/index.html
