"These campaigns are the most cost-effective way to get bed nets to children at-risk of malaria," says Dr. Mark Grabowsky, the malaria program manager at the Global Fund who developed the concept of the campaign while working with the immunization program at the American Red Cross. "The measles partners have already established an extensive community-based infrastructure for vaccinations. Adding a bed net to the package is simple, and actually helps vaccination objectives by providing families with an added incentive to bring their children."
Once the campaign is complete, Kenya expects to have increased the number of families with young children owning a long lasting bed net from 25 percent to more than 70 percent. Based on studies in other areas, it is estimated that this will prevent the deaths of 70,000 children over the next three years, in addition to countless cases of anemia, low-birth weight and other side effects of malaria.
A brief visit to the nearby district hospital starkly demonstrates the imperative of controlling malaria in the area. Room after room is filled with mothers anxiously waiting with their glazed-eyed and eerily silent children, most in the advanced stages of malaria. One in every four children in Nyanza province die of malaria before they reach the age of five, Milton Omondi, the sole doctor, comments as he inserts an intravenous drip of anti-malarial medication into the scalp of an inert child, unable to reach the boy's others veins because of dehydration associated with the disease. On a typical day, three of the more than one hundred malaria-infected children he tends to will die of the disease.
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