Malaria No More Debuts “Power of One” (Po1) Campaign to Fight Malaria

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Malaria No More announced today the debut of its most aggressive campaign to date: Power of One (Po1), where a one dollar donation provides a life-saving test and treatment for a child in Africa. The Power of One campaign uses the latest social, mobile, and e-commerce technologies to rally the global public to close malaria testing and treatment gaps in Africa, starting with Zambia. Malaria No More’s Power of One campaign is supported by some of the world’s most innovative companies, including Novartis, Alere Inc., 21st Century Fox, AHAlife.com, Causes.com, Time Warner, Twitter, Venmo and others.

A child dies every minute from malaria, making it one of the top killer diseases among children worldwide. Every dollar donated to the campaign – via the campaign’s new, mobile-friendly website Po1.org — funds a life-saving treatment for a child with malaria. The campaign aims to accelerate progress toward ending malaria deaths by closing critical treatment gaps in Africa. In 2014 and 2015, it’s estimated that over 300 million treatments are needed in Africa. Malaria No More has chosen Zambia as the first country for its Power of One campaign, as it has emerged as one of the best examples of innovation and progress in the malaria fight, and is working with the government and partners on the ground to provide 3 million treatments for children with malaria.

Power of One is using mobile phones in Africa and the U.S. in new ways to track impact and engage the public, and the campaign site, Po1.org, will leverage new tools from popular digital platforms, like Twitter and Venmo, in the coming weeks.

“It’s unacceptable that a child dies every minute for lack of malaria diagnosis and treatment, worth only a dollar,” said Martin Edlund, CEO, Malaria No More. “We’re challenging the world to help us fix that through the Power of One campaign where users can donate, track and share impact, and engage their friends using the latest mobile tools. One dollar really can save a life – and we’ll prove it.”

To debut the platform, Malaria No More will distribute 1 million “life-saving vouchers” over the next week through supporting online and physical retailers, such as AHAlife.com, as well as at high level events taking place in New York City, including Mashable’s Social Good Summit, the United Nation’s MDG Innovation Forum, and the Global Citizen Festival in Central Park. Audiences making everyday purchases will receive a ticket featuring a special code that, when redeemed on act.Po1.org, provides a test and treatment, without a donation, to save a child’s life in Zambia.

Top media partners, 21st Century Fox and Time Warner, are airing campaign PSAs and digital ads nationally this week, and ads will run across dozens of other national broadcast channels, cable networks, radio stations, popular websites, and on prominent billboards. Additionally, as a feature partner on the new platform release of Causes.com this week, the Power of One campaign is being highlighted and heavily promoted to users.

Novartis, the world’s leading provider of malaria treatments and exclusive treatment sponsor of the Power of One campaign, is donating up to three million full courses of its pediatric antimalarial drug and will support the campaign financially over the next three years. “I am proud of the significant and longstanding commitment Novartis has to the fight against malaria. For all our progress though, there’s still more work to do,” said Joseph Jimenez, CEO of Novartis. “We need more help to close the treatment gap and Power of One offers everyone a chance to engage and make a difference for children suffering from malaria.”

Alere, the world’s leading provider of rapid diagnostic tests for malaria and exclusive diagnostics partner to Malaria No More, will donate over the course of the campaign two million rapid diagnostic tests to aid point-of-care diagnosis of the disease in sub-Saharan Africa. “Accurate diagnosis of malaria significantly improves the odds in treating the disease and ending premature deaths of children,” said Ron Zwanziger, Chairman and CEO of Alere. “Alere is proud to partner with Malaria No More and to support the Power of One campaign in its goal of preventing deaths from this devastating disease.”

Every dollar donated to the Power of One campaign provides a life-saving test and treatment for a child in Africa. Thanks to our corporate partners, Power of One will be able to amplify public impact. For the first million dollars raised by the public every year, Novartis will match the global public’s contribution and donate up to an additional one million treatments and Alere will donate one million rapid diagnostic tests – this translates to two treatments and one test for every dollar donated.

For more information and to sign up to support the Power of One campaign, visit www.Po1.org.

Source: Malaria No More

Malaria Deaths

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QUESTION

How many people have died from malaria since 1966?

ANSWER

Accurate counts of the number of people who die from malaria are notoriously hard to make, since often the infection goes diagnosed, or the cause of death is not reported. However, the World Health Organization has estimated that until recently, about 1 million died each year from malaria. So, without taking into account changes in population size or other demographic factors, that means roughly 45 million people have died from malaria since the mid 1960s.

In the last few years, large-scale coordinated global efforts as well as numerous grass-roots campaigns have sought to reduce the number of deaths from malaria, mainly through improved preventive methods, education, diagnosis and treatment availability. As such, in 2010, it was estimated that deaths were down to about 700,000 per year, though that figure is contested by some, who argue it should be far higher. Organizations such as Malaria No More and the Roll Back Malaria consortium seek to prevent all deaths from malaria by the year 2015, and are working tirelessly to achieve that target.

Malaria Help from U.S. Nurses

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QUESTION

What can American nurses do to help those with malaria?

ANSWER

It is great that you are interested in helping the fight against malaria. One very valuable thing that nurses can do, given their crucial medical training, is volunteer overseas in places that are hard-hit by malaria. Websites such as this: Volunteer Abroad post these kinds of opportunities when they become available. Other, longer-term, volunteering opportunities are also available through governmental programs such as Peace Corps.

Closer to home, nurses can help to galvanize their communities to raise awareness about malaria. Another large-scale effort throughout the United States has been to try to raise money to buy long-lasting insecticide treated bednets for communities around the world, and particularly in sub-Saharan Africa, which are especially at risk of malaria. You could hold a fund-raising event in your community, or perhaps get involved with the initiatives in other ways. Many organizations are working towards bednet distribution, and links to just a couple of them are here:

Malaria No More

Project Mosquito Net

Organizations Against Malaria

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QUESTION

What is a good organization that helps stop malaria?

ANSWER

There are many organizations that work very hard to control malaria. The most well known are those that design policies and implement projects to control malaria on the ground, in places where the disease is most deadly. These include multilateral international organizations such as UNICEF and the World Health Organization (as well as its regional counterparts, such as the Pan-American Health Organization, PAHO), country-led aid organizations such as DIfD in the UK and USAID in the US (the President’s Malaria Initiative, PMI, is largely implemented via USAID) as well as non-governmental organizations which seek to improve the lives of people in developing countries, such as Save the Children, Malaria No More and many other such groups.

Some of these groups have also joined forces to create multi-faceted organizations and programmes dedicated to controlling malaria, such as the Roll Back Malaria consortium and the Global Fund to fight AIDS, TB and Malaria, which provides millions of dollars of funding to projects throughout the world.

Secondly, there is also an aspect to malaria control which is not so easily seen on the ground, and that is the vast numbers of researchers who are dedicated to finding new drugs to treat malaria, new methods for control and new insecticides to prevent transmission from mosquitoes, among many other examples. These researchers are found in universities and research institutes all over the world, including many in sub-Saharan Africa, India and other places where the burden of malaria is very high.

On our website, you can find some personal accounts of scientists, working for the global pharmaceutical company AstraZeneca, who are doing drug discovery research in Bangalore, India. There are also blog posts from scientists at Princeton looking at transmission of malaria between monkeys and humans in south-east Asia, and information about cutting edge research at the Global Health Group at the University of California, San Francisco, whose members conduct work on a variety of aspects of malaria biology and control initiatives.

Malaria In Africa

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QUESTION

What factors cause Africans to get this disease?

ANSWER

The highest number of malaria cases every year occur in Africa, not because of anything specifically due to the people living there (in fact, they may be better protected against malaria than most—I will come onto this later) but because malaria transmission is very high in many parts of sub-Saharan Africa and sufficient preventative measures are still lacking in some places.

Malaria transmission requires specific environmental criteria, such as sufficient temperature and rainfall. These conditions are met in many countries in Africa, and unlike some other parts of the world, temperatures are suitable year-round for the development of the Anopheles mosquitoes that act as the vector for mosquito, meaning that in some places, transmission can occur throughout the year. In addition, many people do not take appropriate preventative measures against malaria; in some cases, this is due to a lack of means to buy items such as insecticide-treated bednets, and in other cases people have not been educated about the dangers of malaria or how to prevent it, so they do not know what preventative measures they should be undertaking.

Organisations such as the World Health Organisation, the US Agency for International Development, the Global Fund, the Roll Back Malaria consortium and Malaria No More are working to improve both access to preventative measures, such as bednets and indoor residual spraying, while also educating people about the need for prevention and also what to do if they suspect themselves or a family member has malaria. These efforts have already reduced the burden of malaria in Africa; the number of deaths is dropping every year, and they hope to have eliminated deaths from malaria altogether by the year 2015.

I mentioned that Africans may be better protected against malaria naturally—scientists have noted that populations living in areas with high levels of malaria have some genetic protection against infection. One example of this is the Duffy antigen. People who are negative for this gene seem to be protected against Plasmodium vivax and P. knowlesi malaria (it was originally thought they were resistant to infection, but more recent evidence from Kenya suggests in fact they still get infected, but do not get as sick). Another is the gene for sickle cell anaemia; despite causing highly debilitating and even lethal anaemia if both copies of the gene are inherited, a single copy of the gene confers strong resistance against malaria. Both of these genetic traits are highly prevalent in African populations.

In addition, early exposure to malaria results in the acquisition of immunity to infection. This, over time, Africans who survive childhood malaria go on to be less susceptible as adults. The exception to this are pregnant women; in order to support the growing foetus, a pregnant women’s immune system becomes much weaker (otherwise there is a risk of the immune system rejecting the foetus). As such, even if she had high levels of acquired immunity to malaria prior to her pregnancy, once pregnant she becomes much more susceptible. This is particularly true for a woman’s first pregnancy.

Malaria in Africa

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QUESTION

What is the current problem for malaria in Africa?

ANSWER

Malaria is a particularly severe problem in Africa due to a number of reasons. First of all, transmission in many parts of Africa occurs year round, due to favourable conditions for the development of the mosquitoes malaria requires as its vector.

Secondly, the dominant and most widespread species of malaria in Africa is Plasmodium falciparum, which is most fast-acting and deadly form of the disease.

Thirdly, Africa has a very young population; birth rates are high across much of the continent, and in many countries, more than 40% of the population is under 15 years old. Given that young children are are higher risk of malaria than adults, this also increases the burden of malaria in Africa compared to other parts of the world.

Finally, access to health care and malaria control interventions in Africa has been plagued by more general issues of slow development. While national health systems are slowly emerging, many countries are still reliant on foreign aid and NGOs to provide even basic health services.

Even where these organisations can provide health care, they often face challenges such as reaching remote populations without good road access, finding ways to provide medical services without reliable electricity or communications networks and maintaining supply chains of diagnostic tools and crucial medicine.

However, signs of progress are being seen. Long-lasting insecticide treated bednets have been put forward as a key preventative measure against malaria, and to date millions have been distributed to people living in malarial areas in Africa, and particularly to high risk groups such as young children and pregnant women.

Simultaneously, other control initiatives, such as indoor residual spraying, are gaining traction and being deployed in more areas. An emphasis on local capacity building has encouraged community involvement in drug distribution and access to health care initiatives, as well as training local health workers in diagnostic methods in rural areas.

Encouraging reports from groups such as Malaria No More and the Roll Back Malaria consortium suggest that the number of deaths from malaria in Africa last year was the lowest in history, and efforts are underway to reduce that number to zero, worldwide, by the year 2015.

How Many People Have Died from Malaria?

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QUESTION

How many people have died from this disease today? (2011)

ANSWER

Estimates for the number of annual deaths from malaria vary, and are not very accurate since they depend heavily on the quality of reporting. Since the majority of people who die from malaria are in sub-Saharan Africa, and often far from decent health facilities, it can sometimes be difficult to determine whether someone died of malaria or some other cause. The latest data available are for 2010 (2011’s statistics will be published some time in 2012): World Health Organisation estimated that last year approximately 655,000 people died from malaria, which was a decrease of 39,000 from 2009 and a drop of 25% from 2000. It is expected that the number of deaths will continue to fall in 2011. Organisations such as Malaria No More are dedicated to ending all deaths from malaria by the year 2015.

If you have ever taken anti-malaria medication, please take Malaria.com’s brief Malaria Medication Side-effects Survey: Treatment and Prophylaxis.

What is Malaria?

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QUESTION

What is Malaria?

ANSWER

Malaria is a disease caused by parasites of the genus Plasmodium. Transmitted by mosquitoes, there are several different kinds of malaria distributed throughout the tropical and sub-tropical regions of the world, causing somewhere between 300-500 million cases of disease each year, and as many as 1 million deaths. In fact, malaria is one of the biggest killers of children under the age of five in sub-Saharan Africa, one of the regions of the world where the burden from malaria is the highest. Malaria is usually an acute disease, manifesting itself with severe fever, chills, headache and often nausea as well. Some types of malaria can have relapsing episodes over a time period of many years.

Having said this, malaria is easily preventable, through avoiding mosquito bites by wearing appropriate clothing and sleeping under insecticide-treated bednets, or through taking preventative medication (called prophylaxis). Malaria is also treatable once symptoms appear, through ingesting safe, effective and relatively cheap drugs. With such control measures at hand, you may ask why malaria is still such a huge problem in our world; the answer is that delivering control strategies and treatment to populations most at risk is difficult, and often countries with high malaria burdens don’t have efficient and effective health systems in place to coordinate control efforts.

International non-governmental organisations such as the World Health Organisation, as well as a multitude of non-profit organisations such as the Malaria Consortium and Malaria No More, work tirelessly to bring malaria control and treatment to the places that need it most, with the aim to eradicate malaria as a disease of public health importance.

What is Malaria?

by

QUESTION

What is malaria?

ANSWER

Malaria is a disease caused by parasites of the genus Plasmodium. Transmitted by mosquitoes, there are several different kinds of malaria distributed throughout the tropical and sub-tropical regions of the world, causing somewhere between 300-500 million cases of disease each year, and as many as 1 million deaths. In fact, malaria is one of the biggest killers of children under the age of five in sub-Saharan Africa, one of the regions of the world where the burden from malaria is the highest. Malaria is usually an acute disease, manifesting itself with severe fever, chills, headache and often nausea as well. Some types of malaria can have relapsing episodes over a time period of many years.

Having said this, malaria is easily preventable, through avoiding mosquito bites by wearing appropriate clothing and sleeping under insecticide-treated bednets, or through taking preventative medication (called prophylaxis). Malaria is also treatable once symptoms appear, through ingesting safe, effective and relatively cheap drugs. With such control measures at hand, you may ask why malaria is still such a huge problem in our world; the answer is that delivering control strategies and treatment to populations most at risk is difficult, and often countries with high malaria burdens don’t have efficient and effective health systems in place to coordinate control efforts.

International non-governmental organisations such as the World Health Organisation, as well as a multitude of non-profit organisations such as the Malaria Consortium and Malaria No More, work tirelessly to bring malaria control and treatment to the places that need it most, with the aim to eradicate malaria as a disease of public health importance.

What is Malaria?

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QUESTION

What is it?

ANSWER

I have copied the below answer from an earlier question also asking what malaria is:

Malaria is a disease caused by parasites of the genus Plasmodium. Transmitted by mosquitoes, there are several different kinds of malaria distributed throughout the tropical and sub-tropical regions of the world, causing somewhere between 300-500 million cases of disease each year, and as many as 1 million deaths. In fact, malaria is one of the biggest killers of children under the age of five in sub-Saharan Africa, one of the regions of the world where the burden from malaria is the highest. Malaria is usually an acute disease, manifesting itself with severe fever, chills, headache and often nausea as well. Some types of malaria can have relapsing episodes over a time period of many years.

Having said this, malaria is easily preventable, through avoiding mosquito bites by wearing appropriate clothing and sleeping under insecticide-treated bednets, or through taking preventative medication (called prophylaxis). Malaria is also treatable once symptoms appear, through ingesting safe, effective and relatively cheap drugs. With such control measures at hand, you may ask why malaria is still such a huge problem in our world; the answer is that delivering control strategies and treatment to populations most at risk is difficult, and often countries with high malaria burdens don’t have efficient and effective health systems in place to coordinate control efforts.

International non-governmental organisations such as the World Health Organisation, as well as a multitude of non-profit organisations such as the Malaria Consortium and Malaria No More, work tirelessly to bring malaria control and treatment to the places that need it most, with the aim to eradicate malaria as a disease of public health importance.