Using a wobbly bicycle, peasant farmer Kalifan Keita is traveling from village to village around Mali to test children for malaria and distribute drugs to those who are sick.
Irin News, a UN publication, says Keita is a volunteer in one of 18 communities that are part of a pilot project being run by the non-governmental organisation [NGO] Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) in a malaria-endemic region of Mali.
“He is achieving in Mali what the government and decades of Western aid have largely failed to do.
“… These community projects are refreshingly simple. Overheads are as low as the cost of the testing kits and drugs. In Nonanda around 100 villages are receiving malaria coverage for a total outlay of about US $400,000.”
Gates foundation
The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, created with the billions from Microsoft, hosted a gathering of scientists and policymakers in Seattle last week to discuss the scientific breakthroughs needed to eradicate the disease, which is carried by mosquitoes.
There is no vaccine for malaria. Protective measures include bed nets and insecticides. Life-saving drugs — like those distributed by Keita on his bicycle — can be administered after someone gets sick.
Funding to battle malaria has skyrocketed in the past three years, according to Forbes, to $200 billion. It's the cause celebre. People like Gates believe that eradicating malaria in sub-Sahara Africa, where 900,000 people die of the disease annually, could help make the African economy more productive.
But while that $200 billion is being spent somewhere, I keep thinking about Kalifan Keita making his rounds on a wobbly bicycle.
This isn't the first time that workers used bicycles to fight malaria. Flooding in the Sudan in 2003 forced medical personnel onto bicycles to reach stricken areas.
AIDS workers also have taken to bicycles to deliver treatment to outlying areas. See “Kona assembles first BikeTown Africa bike.
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