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On World Malaria Day, UNICEF Calls for a Sustained Effort to Control Killer Disease

NEW YORK, 25 April 2008 – On World Malaria Day, UNICEF is calling for a sustained effort to control the disease.

“It is unacceptable that malaria still kills more than one million people, mostly children, every year,” said UNICEF Executive Director Ann M. Veneman. “Malaria is a curable and preventable disease that can be controlled by increasing the use of mosquito nets and other proven interventions, as part of integrated, community-based programs.”

Malaria is endemic in 107 countries and territories. It is “a disease without borders” -- the theme for this first World Malaria Day.

Increased global awareness about malaria has contributed to a significant rise in available resources over recent years, thanks to the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, TB and Malaria, the US President’s Malaria Initiative, the World Bank, UNICEF and others. These funds are now facilitating the rapid improvements and scaling-up of malaria intervention coverage.

Since 2003, most African countries have switched to the more effective World Health Organization-recommended Artemisinin-based Combination Therapy (ACT) to treat malaria. There has been a significant increase in global ACT production, from less than 4 million treatment doses in 2004 to over 100 million in 2006.

In 16 of the 20 African countries for which trend data is available the use of insecticide-treated nets has tripled since 2000.

“In Ethiopia, 18 million long-lasting insecticidal nets that protect against malaria have been distributed since 2005, and in Kenya 10 million nets have been distributed in the past five years,” said Veneman. “These successes show what can be achieved with concerted action. But with an estimated 800,000 African children still dying from malaria every year, it is clear that much remains to be done.”

If malaria is to be controlled, interventions must be further scaled up, sustained financing must be made available, and community involvement and leadership must be encouraged, alongside stronger global, regional and national partnerships.

Background information
UNICEF is the world’s largest global procurer and deliverer of insecticide-treated nets (ITNs) with 18.8 million procured in 2007. More than 90 per cent of these were long lasting insecticide-treated nets that do not require re-treatment. These nets are distributed to pregnant women and young children as part of integrated programs that include antenatal care and immunization.

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New Conejo Group Seeks Help for The Greater Contribution, Ventura County Star, August 19, 2006

By Staff reports, The Ventura County Star
August 19, 2006

Those involved with a new philanthropic organization in the area are preparing to send out invitations for an October fundraiser, but they're not looking for a lot of people to show up.

The four-woman steering committee of The Greater Contribution is planning a black-tie, no-show dinner. They'll send out invitations to not show up, just send a contribution, said Elise O'Keefe, senior human resources manager for MBDA Inc. The no-show event is the group's latest step in fighting poverty, but it won't be the last.

O'Keefe and three business associates formed the group in the Conejo Valley after finding they shared the frustration of not being able to do more to help with humanitarian causes around the globe. In a news release, they said they agreed it was time to take a stand and make a "greater contribution." Their deepest area of concern, they said, is impoverished families that endure extreme suffering for food and are victims of violence and disease.

So far, the original four comprise the organization's steering committee, with about a dozen other women executives ready to step in and volunteer as needed, O'Keefe said.

She, along with Karon Wright, president of Achievement Partners, and Diany Klein, vice president of Human Resources at Community Memorial Hospital, live in the Conejo Valley. Kathy Tamashiro, administrator of The Palms at Bonaventure, lives in Ventura.

When the women first started talking about their concerns, O'Keefe said, she was convinced getting involved was the thing to do. "When I heard about the opportunity, it really spoke to me," she said. "I have a deep passion for victims of natural and man-made disasters and countries that are in need of development."

Rather than reinvent the wheel, they have teamed with C.A.R.E., an international organization with 60 years of addressing the complex social, economic and political causes at the root of poverty in 70 developing countries.

The Greater Contribution members are focused on volunteering to raise money and awareness of C.A.R.E.'s mission in the Conejo Valley and surrounding areas and has set its sights on raising $100,000 this year. Fundraisers such as the no-show black-tie affair and others that are low to no-cost to run are in their plans, as well as working with C.A.R.E. to speak to local state and national legislators to request their support on legislation fighting poverty, and to give educational presentations to local groups, clubs and businesses.

On June 7 and 8, Wright and Klein attended C.A.R.E.'s National Advocacy Conference in Washington, D.C., along with 300 C.A.R.E. donors and supporters, working as citizen lobbyists. Wright led a team of C.A.R.E. supporters who made their case on Capital Hill, asking congressional representatives to take the lead on critical issues in the fight against global poverty.

The Greater Contribution's current focus is C.A.R.E.'s Giving Circles Challenge, which began June 1 and will continue to Dec. 31. Banding together, women are pooling donations so they can have a greater impact on their chosen cause. C.A.R.E.'s goal is to raise $1 million.

The circle raising the most money wins a C.A.R.E. Corps volunteer trip for a maximum of 20 people to Peru in spring 2007, to experience C.A.R.E.'s work in the field.

To volunteer with The Greater Contribution or to help with the group's Giving Circle, contact Elise O'Keefe at 1-818-271-9625 or via e-mail at eliseokeefe@adelphia.net.

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Race Against Death
Nicholas D. Kristof column from The New York Times, June 2006.

At this rate, by 2020, the total death toll from AIDS will reach 70 million — more than double that of the Black Death in Europe in the 14th century.

"We're still losing the war on AIDS," says Richard Holbrooke, chairman of the Global Business Coalition on H.I.V./AIDS. "We're just losing it at a slower rate than we used to."

President Bush, to his credit, has taken AIDS more seriously than any of his predecessors or almost any other world leader. His huge increases for AIDS funding (quadruple the spending by President Bill Clinton and the Republican Congress at the time) are expected to save about nine million lives.

My sense is that Mr. Bush's program runs very well in some places, but in others it "is not in touch with the epidemic in southern Africa," in the words of Marlin McKay, an AIDS doctor in South Africa. In Kenya, St. Mary's Mission Hospital says it is pulling out of the U.S. program in disgust at all the money that is going to bureaucrats rather than patients. Father William Fryda, a veteran missionary doctor who runs the hospital, says the U.S. program "struggles for relevance within Africa."

A central problem is that the U.S. program is sometimes squeamish about condoms for young people and obsesses about abstinence. Christina Lem, a friend working on an AIDS orphan project, saw a U.S.-funded aid worker in Zambia warning kids away from condoms because they break.

The Bush administration is right to promote abstinence, but condoms must be part of the message. Pontificating against promiscuity only goes so far, because often what kills African women isn't flings but marriage.

"For a woman, the greatest risk factor is getting married," notes Dan Mullins, a CARE official who showed me some of the group's terrific operations in Swaziland (www.care.org).

Fortunately, over time Mr. Bush's aides have adjusted the AIDS program to meet on-the-ground realities — using cheap generics, for example, rather than just branded medicines. And implementation depends hugely on local officials: here in Namibia, AIDS workers say they have seen no hostility to condoms. All in all, what I see in Africa reassures me about the U.S. program. Its prudishness is a problem in some places, but over all the U.S. still hands out far more condoms than any other country.

Looking ahead, one of the biggest needs is for increased testing — and a challenge there has been resistance from AIDS activists. They worry that people who test positive may be stigmatized and driven from their villages. That's a genuine concern, and confidentiality of test results is important. But the biggest threat to Africans isn't that H.I.V. will stigmatize them, but that it will kill them.

So far the mantra in the field has been VCT — voluntary counseling and testing — but this has been a colossal failure. Today 90 percent of people with the virus don't know it.
We need to move to widespread testing, while still allowing people to opt out. For example, in southern Africa there should be routine testing of pregnant women, people who are to be married and tuberculosis patients.

That way a pregnant woman who is H.I.V.-positive can get drugs to prevent transmission to the child. Young people can find out if a marriage may kill them. (Already young Namibians are often demanding evidence that a partner is H.I.V.-negative before going ahead with a marriage.) And doctors should know about the status of TB patients, because that will help determine the treatment.

We should also promise that if someone tests positive, we will try hard to get antiretrovirals to keep them alive.

So what is to be done? We need to continue developing AIDS vaccines, as well as microbicide gels that women can use to protect themselves from straying boyfriends or husbands. We need to ensure that Mr. Bush's AIDS program is renewed. And all countries need to chip in more to the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria.

After my column about desperate AIDS orphans in Swaziland, a reader named Loryn wrote: "Please offer us some way, short of slitting our wrists, to respond." So, Loryn, open your checkbook: I've seen the great work done in Africa by CARE, Africare, the Cabrini Mission Foundation and Population Services International, and many other private groups do terrific work as well.

Unless we get moving, over the next 14 years some 45 million additional lives may be claimed by AIDS - far more than by either Stalin or Hitler. The fates of those human beings are in our hands.