As organizations around the world honor World Malaria Day today, I'd like to give you something else to think about. And no, I'm not talking about the numbers and statistics that are vaunted so often as deterministic in the fight against infectious disease in the modern world. I'm talking about a snapshot of the day-to-day experiences and efforts that prove most valuable to malaria prevention, and just how important it is to educate individual people about the disease.
It may be hard for many of us in the developed world to imagine that many people in still-developing countries live in constant fear of mosquitoes-the primary carriers of malaria-or that other groups, in cultural contexts different from our own, may attribute causes of malarial infections to religious beliefs, or may reject preventive technologies for similar reasons. But barriers like these are all too common. World Malaria Day's "Rollback Malaria," a campaign funded by the Global Malaria Action Plan, aims to address these barriers directly by reaching out to individuals, providing access to preventive care, education and holistic support.
The Global Malaria Action Plan proposes to eliminate malaria once and for all by providing individuals with supplies and services such as insecticide-treated bednets, in-home spraying for mosquito, diagnostic tests (RDT's) and ample doses of effective treatment. (more...)
