A Staggering Drop in Malaria Deaths in Just One Year
Imagine a plague of tiny insects running wild in your community, biting children in their beds while they sleep. Imagine each bite poisoning their blood with deadly parasites. Imagine one child every 30 seconds dying of malaria. Then imagine stopping this killer disease. In one community in West Africa, it was done.
Continue Reading ›The Most Hated Creature on the Planet
There are some terrifying creatures in our world. Lions and snakes and crocodiles, oh my! Sharks even get their own week of the year. But there is one little pest that is far more deadly than these that has recently been the object of a lot of fear and hate.
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World Malaria Day: Save a Family Through Malaria Prevention
Instead of showing up to the playground for his morning soccer game, little Mamadou woke with a high fever and began to vomit. His mother, Mariam, rushed him to the doctor. Sitting on the back of the bicycle, clutching his mother’s dress tightly, Mamadou quivered throughout the 10km-long ride from their house to the public health center. His mother had only one thought: She hoped her son did not have malaria.
Malaria Bites! Bite Back.
What does malaria feel like? If malaria goes untreated, what can it lead to?
A Creative Writing Assignment for World Malaria Day 2013
Half of the world’s population, 3.3 billion people, is vulnerable to malaria. And it’s all because of mosquitoes.
I Have Malaria (or Thought I Did)
I came home from Ghana with severe chills, headache and a fever. I’d been in Africa two weeks, and these symptoms alarmed me. Could I be infected with malaria?
World Malaria Day 2012
As they toured a village in Uganda, they came upon a grave on a hillside of a man – a father, a husband, a friend, a son – prematurely taken from his family because of malaria. Malaria, a disease preventable with as little as a mosquito net and an elementary health education.
Parents in Burkina Faso Keep Children Safe Against Malaria
The need for mosquito nets for children in Burkina Faso is high, and solutions are being sought. Parental education is also a big step in the fight against malaria.
World Malaria Day 2011 – It’s Okay to Get Angry
The theme for World Malaria Day 2011 is “Achieving Progress and Impact.” It’s a time to celebrate the victories of the past couple of years, but also to stress the great needs in order to reach near-zero deaths by 2015.
Counting Malaria Out
At the center of Riaciina village in Kenya lies a semi-permanent house, traditionally constructed. The walls of the house are made of mud and smoothly smeared with cow dung. The roof is thatched with iron sheets. There is a big gap between the mud and iron sheets. Mosquitoes penetrate freely day and night. 
This is the home of Amina, a toddler enrolled in the local Child Survival Program (CSP). At the back of the homestead lies waste from the nearby kitchen. On the other side of the home are thick bushes of indigenous trees.
As the CSP specialist visited the mother, mosquito bites could be noted on the face of the child. Throughout the session, the TEEEE! TEEEE! sound of mosquitoes could be heard.
In some countries, mosquitoes are just nuisance, but in Riaciina, mosquitoes pose a deadly threat. Mosquito-borne malaria is the major killer disease in the area.
Riaciina village lies in the semi-arid part of Kenya on the extreme southern slopes of the largest mountain in Kenya, Mount Kirinyaga. The occupants are mainly the Ambeere and the Akaamba people whose primary work is farming and fishing. (more…)
World Malaria Day 2009: Count Malaria Out
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)
A Mosquito Bite Away
One of the things that shocked me when I visited Uganda last month was finding myself scared to death of mosquitoes. It was the strangest feeling to be afraid of something so small — something we usually think of as just a pest. But in Africa mosquito bites don’t just make your arm itch — they kill.
Malaria, which is transmitted by infected mosquitoes, is killing one million people a year. Most of these are children under age 5 in Africa. That’s right. Malaria, which is preventable and treatable, is killing more than 750,000 children a year in Africa.
Before visiting Uganda, I never really understood how mosquitoes managed to claim so many lives. But when I visited homes there, I understood. Many of the houses don’t have doors — just sheets covering the openings. And the windows are usually bare, too. So at night, the mosquitoes help themselves.
Catherine, a single mother I met in Uganda, told me that before Compassion gave her an insecticide-treated mosquito net, she did everything she could to protect her 10-year-old daughter, Irene. But her efforts were in vain.
“Every night, I tried to cover Irene with a blanket, but she would still get bitten all night long,” said Catherine. “I wanted so badly to buy her a net, but I couldn’t afford it.”
And when Irene got malaria, Catherine certainly couldn’t afford doctors’ bills. “Before Compassion, I would go pleading to doctors for help and beg to pay later,” she said.
Thank God that Compassion intervened! Through the ministry’s Complementary Interventions Program, Irene is now getting medicine and sleeps under a quality net. Today, she’s healthy and thriving.
You can make a difference and help protect vulnerable children like Irene! Since today is World Malaria Day, take a minute to learn more about this disease and see how you can join the fight!
