I magine the entire Princeton undergraduate student body being killed off in one day. Though this would be a devastating and tragic event, we don't realize that this is what happens every day in Africa. Malaria kills more than 5,000 people each day in Africa and affects 500 million Africans each year, most of them children.
In recent years, there has been a dramatic increase in funding for anti-malaria programs due to the creation of the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis, and Malaria. The Gates foundation has also helped. Unfortunately, this funding has not been enough. Malaria kills roughly as many people as AIDS each year but receives much less national and international attention. More collaboration between aid efforts is needed if we want to combat and suppress malaria on a large scale. Instead of putting all of our money into drug and vaccine research, we should also put money and effort into utilizing the tools that we already have: insecticide-treated mosquito nets and drainage systems. The use of insecticide-treated bed nets alone has been proven to reduce child mortality by 20 percent, but as of 2002, only 15 percent of African children actually slept under a net. Bed nets only cost $5 - about as much as a trip to Starbucks - and directly save lives.
So, you might wonder, how does malaria affect me? The answer is that as a developed nation, the United States has a moral obligation to help those in need, especially when treatment and prevention of malaria are relatively simple and inexpensive. Global health is becoming the buzzword on universities around the United States as more and more students are pursuing majors in global health and are traveling to study infectious diseases. Until this spring, Princeton students were not given the opportunity to directly pursue this field of study, but with the announcement of the new global health certificate program this month, many students will have the opportunity to study and research many aspects of global disease. It is not necessary to pursue the new certificate, however, to make an impact on malaria and other such diseases.
Mathias Esmann '11 traveled to Sierra Leone with some friends last summer to mass distribute bed nets around Sahn Malen village. The purpose of his visit was to ensure that every sleeping space in the village was covered in order to bring down the number of vectors to reduce the number of people infected by malaria. Esmann and his group took a community approach, allying with the local district health team to "try to make the community feel that the project was theirs, not ours," he said.
Kim Bonner '08 first became interested in the disease when traveling to the Dominican Republic over spring break during her sophomore year. As a molecular biology major, she returned to the country and began researching malaria-control efforts; she soon found that massive funding and infrastructure gaps were greatly impeding the success of these efforts. Bonner plans to go to Tanzania this summer to spend two years as part of the Scholar in the Nations Service program studying malaria.
Through travels to Africa and continuing individual work with malaria, one of the authors of this column, too, has seen the devastating impacts of this deadly but widely preventable disease. Many people fail to realize that malaria and HIV are very closely connected through co-infection, an insight that if widely known, might make more people interested and involved in the prevention of malaria. It is encouraging, however, to see so many students involved in efforts to study and suppress this disease as knowledge and research about malaria is becoming more widespread.
You do not, however, have to travel to Africa or pick up a certificate to be involved in efforts to suppress malaria. There are simple things that you can start doing today. For instance, if you want to get more involved today, on World Malaria Day, please stop by the tables outside Frist Campus Center to donate $5 or more to purchase bed nets for women and children in Africa. Just as importantly, your knowledge of the disease and its impact is essential. The more people begin to recognize malaria and its devastating but completely preventable nature, the greater chance there is of our government actually developing comprehensive and aggressive efforts to combat malaria.
Derek Willis and Ashley Schoettle can be reached at willis@princeton.edu and aschoett@princeton.edu.
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