Nothing But Nets, an initiative of the United Nations Foundation, aims to prevent malaria by providing free mosquito nets for children. In this guest blog, Adrianna Logalbo, deputy director of Nothing But Nets, shares her experiences distributing bed nets in Côte d'Ivoire.
Last week, as we celebrated the two-year anniversary of the United Nations Foundation's Nothing But Nets campaign, one million children in the West African country of Côte d'Ivoire received life-saving bed nets. I had the opportunity, along with 35 United Methodists from the Texas Annual Conference, to witness this incredible effort and report back each day on the success.
On Saturday I met Beatrice, a net recipient, in her home. She greeted us graciously with her young son, Samuel, close by her side, who was shy but intrigued by the visitors. Beatrice had walked to the market on the first day of the campaign, four days earlier, to get her son vaccinated against measles and pick up a free, insecticide-treated bed net. There in her home, hanging over the bed she sleeps in each night with her young son, was a simple bed net that could help save their lives.
I have never been so proud of the work of the Nothing But Nets campaign than when I visited this home. That one bed net represented the thousands of supporters who are raising awareness about malaria in their communities, the tens of thousands more who have contributed to sending nets, and the millions of others we hope will join this effort in the years to come.
I hope we can all celebrate what we have done together - 2 years, more than 20 million dollars raised, and over 2 million nets distributed to children in Africa. But the faces of the children in Côte d'Ivoire remind me that combating malaria is not just a worthy, humanitarian cause, it is a necessity. Each day we needlessly lose 3,000 children to this disease.
Together we are saving lives. Together we distributed a million nets to children in Côte d'Ivoire. Together we can save more.
Watch my video report from a distribution site in Côte d'Ivoire: http://www.globalproblems-globalsolutions.org/site/R?i=pU7uesxDFZ40L4b5Kdklng
