Despite the huge toll that malaria takes on the world, preventing thedisease is relatively easy. Since most transmissions occur throughmosquito bites in the middle of the night, widespread use oflong-lasting, insecticide-treated bednets can reduce transmission by asmuch as 90 percent.
That's why the ,a public charity created to support UN goals, has a campaign devotedentirely to raising money to purchase bed nets.
Thecampaign is called . The name not only highlights thegroup's sole mission; it's also the way people describe a basketballshot that goes right through the hoop, touching nothing but the net.
Thesports connection is no accident. The campaign was launched by Americansports writer Rick Reilly. In 2006, Reilly wrote a in asking readers to give money to the U.N. Foundation to buybednets. More than 17-thousand people responded, sending in more thanone million dollars.
Following the success of this initialdrive, the U.N. Foundation, the National Basketball Association, theUnited Methodist Church and other groups partnered together to formNothing But Nets.
Executive Director Elizabeth Gore says, "TheNothing But Nets campaign has been responsible, thus far, for raising26 million dollars, which translates into 2.6 million nets, which is abig part of this. The U.N. System is now up to distributing almost 20million nets a year."
Everybit of prevention is important, considering the devastating effects ofmalaria around the world. There are about 300 million infections andone million deaths from malaria each year. Malaria hits children thehardest, to the extent that an infected child dies approximately every30 seconds.
The disease also has broader impacts.
"Malariais also hurting all of our other efforts from getting kids to school topeople that are on anti-retroviral drugs dying of malaria," Gore says."It's a root cause of poverty."
Morerecently, Nothing But Nets has partnered with the (UNHCR) to distribute nets in refugee camps. Refugees andinternally displaced peoples are among those most vulnerable tomalaria.
According to Thomas Albrecht of UNHCR, "Refugeesituations are often very complex, but here we can see that one canmake a concrete difference without having to go into much analysis."
Perhapsbecause of this concreteness, enthusiasm for the Nothing But Netscampaign has remained strong, even in a troubled economy.
Goreexplains, "Just in the last four months, this campaign's been doingbetter than ever, so even though we're in this economic downturn, weraised more money in December than we ever have in the campaign."
Thegrassroots organization of Nothing But Nets has also helped maintainits effectiveness. Consider 14-year-old Elisabeth Clymer. She first gotinvolved with Nothing But Nets as part of a school project. She feltso strongly about it that she quickly got her church's youth group onboard. Now her youth group organizes monthly collections at thechurch.
Clymer reports, "On World Malaria Day we? collected almost two thousand dollars just in spare change."
Withan average donation of just 60 dollars, Nothing But Nets will need thehelp of hundreds of netraiser volunteers like Clymer in order toachieve their lofty goals.
"What we're trying to do is coverevery sleeping space on the continent of Africa, which is around 300million people or spaces, give or take," Gore says.
That maysound ambitious, but so is the United Nations' ultimate goal.As part ofthe Millennium Development Goals, the United Nations would like toeradicate malaria by 2015.