Monday, March 1, 2010

Zinduka! and Prevent Malaria

Malaria affects many areas around the world, but currently the disease has especially devastated Africa. In order to combat malaria in Africa, African countries have worked together to educate their citizens about malaria prevention. The main goal of many of anti-malaria organizations has been to guarantee universal access to insecticide-treated mosquito “bed nets.” These efforts have been met with some success, but the African country that has been making headlines lately for its anti-malaria campaign is Tanzania.

Tanzania has planned an aggressive campaign to provide access to mosquito nets and malaria care for its people. To spread the word and help garner support for the cause, Tanzania’s most popular musicians and artists have banned together as ambassadors for the cause and put out a pop song “Zinduka!” meaning “wake up!” to be performed at a large concert to benefit the cause. Tanzania’s president Kikiwete has signed on to head the “Malaria Haikubaliki: Tushirikiane Kuitokomeza” awareness campaign, which translates to “Malaria is unacceptable: working together we can eliminate malaria.” To begin the 2010 campaign, President Kikiwete hosted the nationally broadcast Zinkduka! Concert on February 13th with the aim of reaching millions of Tanzanians via radio or television and thereby informing them about their personal responsibility in preventing the spread of malaria. Clearly, it’s a bit too early to determine the effects of this campaign against malaria, but Tanzania has taken serious initiative in malaria control and prevention in recent years. I thought this article was informative and best of all, inspiring. Here’s the link if you would like to read more:http://www.malarianomore.org/index.php?cID=659

Also, go to the Malaria No More website if you would like to view news on all things malaria around the world.

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