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10th September 2008 Report from Drake Zimmerman Vice Chair  REMaRAG

Malaria control is a global effort with many key players. REMaRAG Cofounder Drake Zimmerman plays the special role to connect Rotarians’ efforts with the broad-based Alliance for Malaria Prevention (AMP). AMP spun off from The Measles Initiative,  itself founded only in 2001 as the first spin-off of PolioPLUS. Same campaign, different bottle. Drake connected Rotarians Against Malaria (prior action group) to The Measles Initiative to add distribution of Long Lasting Insecticide-treated Nets to a vaccination campaign. Malaria as the newest PLUS of PolioPLUS was funded as a Rotary Matching Grant. From those 14,600 nets in 2002 the Measles Initiative grew to become the largest distributor of nets, delivering over 25 million in 2008, the year of the Malaria’s spin-off. The current scale up includes delivery of 150-200 Million nets by the end of 2010.  

Measles/Malaria campaigns attribute much of their success to use of “The Rotary Model”, which added several vaccine-like items – e.g. Vitamin A, deworming medicines -  to regular campaigns. Several innovations being rolled out such as high net-per-household coverage and nets-plus-safe water began as Rotary projects and continue to provide outsized impact for dollar invested. As Vice Chair for REMaRAG/Special Envoy for Partnerships Drake has connected REMaRAG to efforts around the world and to global institutions such as The Global Fund for Aids, TB and Malaria, CDC, World Health Organization, UNICEF, Canada’s CIDA, and the UN and Gates Foundations. Drake also connects the dots of the big picture child mortality overview with specific interventions, tools, methods and tasks to make campaigns run faster, smoother, more economically while delivering ever more goods where needed. The unprecedented logistics needed challenge even Rotarians’ skills.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                       

As a financial analyst Drake notes the economic outputs of the current campaigns should conservatively add $6-10 Billion annually to the local economies. More important than money, lifting the burden of malaria frees up at least half of the entire health care system, creating the capacity continent-wide to address other diseases and prepare for disasters such as tsunamis or Asian Flu. Slight incremental inputs can have outsized impacts. Using net campaigns to add systemic support to health education and information systems means the Malaria campaigns give us the opportunity to upgrade care overall dramatically and almost immediately. The upgrade is just in time to meet the new global satellite linkup also due by the end of 2010. The Malaria Campaigns - saving over 500,000 lives per year - serve as the mechanism to expand and improve health care overall, which in turn saves millions more. For Drake malaria control serves as a platform to quickly and economically deliver child survival and systemic improvements with massive positive implications.

September 2008: Summary of Malaria in the News from RollBack Malaria | Articles relating to Malaria collected from the international press releases by RBM - more info here

September 2008: Summary of Malaria in the News from RollBack Malaria | Articles relating to Malaria collected from the international press releases by RBM - more info here

23 August 2008 - Tightening the net around Malaria an interesting article in The BMJ Vol 337 with a profile of the work and thoughts of Professor Brian Greenwood, LSHTM 

23 August 2008 - Tackling Malaria today - another interesting article in the BMJ Vol337 by Jo Lines, Allan Schapira and Tom Smith with an series of definitions for terms often used - Control, Elimination of disease, Elimination of infection, Eradication and Extinction.

Africa Fighting Malaria Updates and Events  | Africa Fighting Malaria (AFM) seeks to raise awareness of the huge burden of malaria in sub-Saharan Africa and promote sensible policies for long-term solutions - more info here

15 August 2008: Summary of Malaria in the News from RollBack Malaria | Articles relating to Malaria collected from the international press releases by RBM - more info here

July 2008: Will this save millions of lives? | Article by Simon Mann - Malaria is one of the world's most inexorable killers, claiming about 1.3 million people a year. Now a new drug, partly developed in Melbourne, may revolutionise the fight against the disease -  - more info here

May 2008: Without DDT spraying malaria will kill more Robert Leitch writes in the New Vision | "Uganda seems at last to be embarking on a coherent plan to Roll Back Malaria by every measure, the old plan was not working. The plan must include all three legs of the triad, effective treatment, nationwide distribution and use of ITN's and pin-pointed and selective IRS, using the best insecticide currently available, DDT. To the siren calls of the activists, so concerned about our future but with no solutions for today, I have only one comment. Close down your expensive air-conditioned offices in malaria-free San Francisco, Washington DC, Nairobi and Kampala and open them in Lira. Bring your children, leave behind your expensive malaria prophylaxis and designer insect repellents, come and sleep under an ITN and work here for a couple of years. Then you will have a credible voice at the table."