The First World Malaria Day ... April 25, 2008

Today is World Malaria Day ... the first time this designation has been used. For the past few years it was Africa Malaria Day. The name change is, I am told, to help get improved world awareness about the malaria crisis, which affects Africa the most.

Lance Laifer has been one of the important drivers of building awareness and helping to get funds raised. This morning he sent this message:

"On Fri, Apr 25, 2008 at 9:24 AM, lance laifer wrote:
This is from a message we are sending out on facebook today. If you can't be on Facebook today please email it to friends and ask them to share it with their Facebook friends.

TODAY IS THE MOST IMPORTANT DAY IN MALARIA HISTORY - TODAY IS THE BEGINNING OF THE END FOR MALARIA - SINCE MALARIA IS THE LARGEST KILLER IN WORLD HISTORY AND THE LARGEST CAUSE OF POVERTY ENDING MALARIA SHOULD BE THE WORLD'S NUMBER ONE PRIORITY - TODAY THE WORLD WILL DEMONSTRATE IT'S COMMITMENT TO ENDING MALARIA AND WILL THEREFORE BE ONE OF THE MOST IMPORTANT DAYS IN WORLD HISTORY.

Billions of people have died from malaria and billions of people get it every decade - tens of millions die from it every decade. According to Bill Gates, malaria causes more misery than any disease on the planet. Malaria is a also a circular disease of poverty. It is a cause of poverty and it is caused by poverty. It is impossible to know what comes first, malaria or poverty. To end malaria - we the citizens of Facebook must unite and show our solidarity. To that end we are asking you and everyone you can touch to post a black profile picture.

Post your black profile picture now and be part of the most audacious experiment in Facebook history - One Million Faces Against Malaria - World Malaria Day April 25 Project Blackout.

POST A BLACK PROFILE PICTURE TO SHOW THE WORLD WHAT ONE MILLION FACES DYING EVERY YEAR FROM MALARIA LOOKS LIKE
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HOW TO POST A BLACK PROFILE PIC
put your cursor over the black group picture and then right click with your mouse
- then choose save image as black (or choose any name) and save it in "my documents"
- then go to your profile page - click edit (next to your profile).
- choose picture from the menu along the top
- then click browse and choose the black picture that you saved in my documents.
- click that you have permission to use it and it should be uploaded to your profile page
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THIS IS A MOST IMPORTANT STEP - After you post a black profile picture please make sure to change your status to: is posting a black profile pic as part of the blackout of facebook on World Malaria Day - April 25. http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=4110666657.
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MAKE SURE TO JOIN THE GROUP ONE MILLION FACES AGAINST MALARIA - PROJECT BLACKOUT
http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=4110666657 - you need to join this group to add your number to the count in the next step.
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After you change your status, please add you number to the count here:
http://www.facebook.com/topic.php?uid=4110666657&topic=4125
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After you post a black profile picture and post your number to the count please join the group - My black profile picture is posted as part of World Malaria Day FB Blackout - http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=15251101061 - This group is comprised only of people who have blacked out their picture and is a great thing to show your friends to help show them what Facebook can look like tomorrow afternoon.
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After you take care of yourself please invite your friends to join:

- our event One Million Faces Against Malaria - World Malaria Day April 25 Project Blackout http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=11093758954 close to 200,000 people are invited - already the largest online malaria event in history;

- and our group
http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=4110666657
which is already larger than all malaria groups on all social networks combined with more than 20,000 members.

Today the United Nations is going to make a special announcement regarding the UN's leadership in the fight against malaria. Join our group to help support all of the efforts of Ray Chambers, the UN Special Envoy on Malaria.

Take action today - get your black picture up - get your friends to get their black pictures up - together we WILL help save millions of lives.

Be Against Malaria today and make malaria NO MORE!

PS - THIS IS A MOST IMPORTANT STEP IN SPREADING THE WORD - After you post a black profile picture please make sure to change your status to: is posting a black profile pic as part of the blackout of facebook on World Malaria Day - April 25. http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=4110666657

PPS - Email and message this message to as many friends as possible. Over 3,000 children will die on world malaria day - stop this madness NOW!
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FINALLY - please consider donating to project blackout at Against Malaria - 100% of all funds donated will be used to buy long lasting nets for $5 per net. They will show you where the net went and there are no costs added to the price of the net for distribution, management, marketing etc. - http://www.AgainstMalaria.com/blackout

Today is also the sweet sixteen round of the Madness against malaria competition - see http://www.madnessagainstmalaria.com to help decide who wins."

Lance Laifer is doing everything he can to raise awareness and raise money ... and this is good. However, there is a long history of success and of failure in the malaria control area, and important lessons to be learned. Sadly, it is now very predictable that the funds being raised will not produce much sustainable benefit in large part because lessons of history are being ignored and simple interventions are being used without very much performance data being collected and used to inform decision making.

This is what I wrote to Lance Laifer.

Dear Lance

Thank you for your efforts.

I can also report some success in the development and use of Community Impact Accountancy (CIA) for Integrated Malaria Management (IMM).

As you know, there has been a great wave of support for increased funding for malaria and awareness of the burden of malaria is much improved over three years ago. A few years ago annual funding for malaria control interventions were perhaps less than $100 million a year, and now the annual funding is up to as much as $1 billion. This is an amazing accomplishment and everyone concerned should be proud of this.

But raising money and spending money does not assure success. At a World Malaria Day event in Washington this week I listened to prominent leaders in the global malaria health subsector refer to progress in Zanzibar ... including the observation that this is the third time that malaria has been conquered in Zanzibar ... but it has come back. The lesson is that malaria will come back unless there is a comprehensive integrated approach that has built in sustainability. AND THE CURRENT APPROACH TO REDUCING MALARIA SIMPLY USING INSECTICIDE TREATED BEDNETS DOES NOT HAVE THE CHARACTERISTICS TO DELIVER SUSTAINABLE SUCCESS.

My hope is that the wonderful success in fund raising, and the wonderful success in raising awareness of the impact of malaria on human beings, especially children in Africa can be matched with some serious management information about the sustainable results being achieved using these resources. Admiral Ziemer, the PMI coordinator understands very well that it is very important to not only have the funds available, but to use the funds well and to know what works and what does not.

Christian Lengeler at the Swiss Tropical Institute, one of the international experts on bednets and malaria control, has summarized the evidence about effectiveness of bednets in a plain language summary as follows: "Insecticide treated bednets can reduce deaths in children by one fifth and episodes of malaria by half." and "Sleeping under mosquito nets treated with insecticide aims to prevent malaria in areas where the infection is common. They are widely promoted by international agencies and governments to reduce the bad effects of malaria on health. This review showed that good quality studies of impregnated nets markedly reduce child deaths from malaria."

Unless I am totally mistaken ... this is significantly less in terms of effectiveness than the claims being made in the successful fund raising campaigns ... and this is, I believe, a situation that needs to be addressed. I am an old corporate cost accountant and former CFO, and I am used to looking ahead to long term impact of today's strategy ... and my guess is that without really good performance metrics for malaria control interventions there will be a day of reckoning and fund flows will dry up. This would be disastrous.

I applaud your efforts in getting funds raised and getting awareness raised ... are you going to be able to get intervention cost effectiveness raised? When is the 3,000 children dying every day in Africa from malaria going to be not true any more

Sincerely

Peter Burgess
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Peter Burgess
The Transparency and Accountability Network
Tr-Ac-Net in New York
www.tr-ac-net.org
IMMC - The Integrated Malaria Management Consortium Inc.
The Tr-Ac-Net blogs ... start at http://tracnetvision.blogspot.com
917 432 1191 or 212 772 6918 peterbnyc@gmail.com