IF IT'S APRIL 25th� It must be Malaria Awareness Day! About one million deaths each year are attributed to malaria, making it the number one killer of children under five years old in Africa. And the estimated 500 million people who contract malaria each year, but survive, exact a heavy burden on already impoverished health care systems. The real tragedy here is that inexpensive countermeasures can make malaria utterly preventable. For example, most infections occur at night, when mosquitoes are feeding and people are sleeping. One solution? Make bed-nets a mainstay in at-risk communities. At my other blogging outfit, I like to plug Nothing But Nets, a grassroots anti-malaria campaign started by the Sports Illustrated columnist Rick Reilly. For $10, Nothing But Nets buys an insecticide treated bed net and sends it to communities where infection rates are high.
Of course, there is only so much private philanthropy can do. And on the public policy front, the president -- and First Lady -- actually deserve some praise. In 2005, the White House launched the President's Malaria Initiative, which included a $1.2 billion pledge to increase funding to programs that combat malaria. This was certainly a step in the right direction, but as always, more needs to be done to fight off this killer in the night.
--Mark Leon Goldberg
