UN backed Roll Back Malaria lacks citizen centered approach

The West African sub-region is expected to have a youth-led initiative geared towards supporting the 44 African Nations that signed the historic declaration in Abuja in 2000 to scale Malaria down to 50% by year 2010 and near zero deaths by 2015.

A youth led NGO, Volunteer Partnerships for West Africa (VPWA) is mobilizing volunteers from around the world for an impressive and intensive malaria awareness project dubbed KICK MALARIA OUT (KMO) which is an annual event to be held for the next 6 years to reach it objectives.

This impressive campaign has been necessitated due to the identified flaw approach by the United Nations back Roll Back Malaria (RBM) in handling issues of Malaria eradication in Africa says Mr Hayford Siaw (Executive Director of VPWA). One important element missing in RBM is educating the population on breeding fields in households and communities and how the individual citizens can fight for Malaria free communities. The programme therefore lacks citizen centred approach, he concluded.

Mr Hayford argues that, the United States efforts to eradicate Malaria in the 50's was not about distributing of nets and wondered why African governments are in the same bed with mosquito net manufacturers to throw nets on west Africans at the expense of dealing with real issues that can eradicate the disease which is killing our people every minute. He further buttress his point that, Ghana has seen an increase in mosquito nets and most organization now pride themselves as distributing net to poor Africans knowing very well that, these acts are unsustainable and create a mediocritise society. He states. According to WHO (ironically leading the net spree in Africa) report on Malaria in Ghana, there was no evidence of reduction in cases between 2001-2007 and reported deaths has increased in 2007. So what did the nets do?

According to WHO, Africa accounts for over 90 per cent of the 1.5 to 2 million global malaria deaths yearly. In many countries, the scourge is hardest on children from ages 1-5 with a child dying every 30 seconds. In the last decades, the prevalence of malaria in most of the affected countries has taken a huge toll on their health budgets and human resources despite efforts to keep the disease under control. According to the World Bank, Africa spends $12 billion annually in fighting a disease we could eradicate.

The urgent call now is on Africans to initiate holistic approach that put the responsibility on us to eradicate the disease and that's why KMO 2009 marks the beginning of a new chapter in Malaria Campaign in Africa. The 2009 campaign which takes place for a month long period in 6 West African countries (Liberia, Ivory Coast, Ghana, Togo, Benin, and Nigeria) in August-September is to stimulate the citizen into action by disseminating information on the disease and it wide scale health and economic negative effects on the individual while educating the population on breeding fields in our homes and communities and measures to eliminate such sites.

VPWA is therefore calling on all interested individuals, organizations and companies in Africa and well wishers of Africa around the world to support the KMO 2009 campaign in helping eradicate the disease.

Please send an email to [email protected] if you are interested to support KMO 2009. Visit us on www.vpwa.org