The theme for World Malaria Day 2009 is “Count Malaria Out.”

“This year’s World Malaria Day marks a critical moment in time. The international malaria community has merely two years to meet the 2010 targets of delivering effective and affordable protection and treatment to all people at risk of malaria, as called for by the UN Secretary-General, Ban Ki-Moon.”

- www.rollbackmalaria.org

You can help “Count Malaria Out” through our Bite Back Campaign.

Malaria begins with a bite. We believe that we can end malaria by taking a bigger bite.

Your $10 bite will purchase a bed net for a child, and that bed net can protect the child for three years.

• Donate a net.
• Visit the Bite Back Web site to learn more.

Jeff Foxworthy’s 14-year-old daughter, Jordan, is taking a bite. A huge bite. She has helped raise more than half a million dollars for Bite Back.

Oh yeah! The answer to yesterday’s malaria question is false.

Although malaria is an easily preventable disease, because of increasing drug resistance and struggling health-care systems, malaria infections in Africa have actually increased during the last three decades.

(Source: malarianomore.org, November 2008)

Tomorrow morning we’ll publish the answer in the comment section of this post.

The sun was at its zenith on that Thursday I visited. Nana had been at the center since the morning. After the holistic child development program, it was now lunchtime. Many children who were not part of the development center gathered round the church’s courtyard, staring at the registered children enjoying their meals.

Every Thursday there are two groups of children that meet at the development center: registered children and those waiting to be registered. It was such a privilege for Nana to be registered.

After lunch, Tou-Wend-Sida, the team leader, took Nana home. The boy’s left foot was wounded and he could not walk home from the student center. When the team leader and Nana reached home, the boy’s father was sitting in the shadow of one of the two huts that compose the household.

He was resting after working the whole morning to put harvest in a safe place in their loft made of high grass. A smile of complete satisfaction could be seen on his face. The rainy season had been satisfactory, and the harvest was better than in the previous year.

“Hopefully, there is going to be enough food this year after a time of severe food crisis that turned so many lives into hell on earth,” the boy’s father seemed to say to himself, while staring at the loft.

The boy’s mother and sisters were nearby, making brooms out of grass plucked in the field that they will use to sweep the courtyard and the huts.

Some months ago, Nana’s family was going through hard times. Nana was sick from malaria. The family might not have not noticed that the child was sick except for a fortunate accident. Nana was riding a bicycle with his older brother when his left foot got trapped in the rear wheel’s spokes. (more…)