NYT on Nothing But Nets
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We're back! And with great news: Nothing But Nets was featured on the front page of the New York Times today. Reporter Donald G. McNeil, Jr. explains how it's becoming trendy and cool for today's youth to donate $10 to send an insecticide treated bed net to a malaria prone region in Africa.

Unusual allies, like the Methodist and Lutheran Churches, the National Basketball Association and the United Nations Foundation, are stoking the passion for nets that prevent malaria. The annual "American Idol Gives Back" fund-raising television special has donated about $6 million a year for two years. The music channel VH1 made a fund-raising video featuring a pesky man in a mosquito suit.

It is an appeal that clearly resonates with young people.

Addressing a conference of 6,000 Methodist youths in North Carolina last year, Bishop Thomas Bickerton held up his own $10 and told the crowd: "This represents your lunch today at McDonald’s or your pizza tonight from Domino’s. Or you could save a human life."

The lights were so bright that he could see only what was happening at his feet. "They just showered the stage with $10 bills," Bishop Bickerton said. "In 30 seconds, we had $16,000. I'm just lucky they didn’t throw coins."

You too can get in on the action. Click here to donate $10 for one bednet. As they say, "Send a Net, Save a Life."

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November 12, 2008


Taking the Fight Against Malaria to the Front Lines
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Six weeks before his election on November 4, President-elect Barack Obama made a promise to the one million people around the world who die from Malaria each year. "When I am President," he said, "We will set the goal of ending all deaths from Malaria by 2015. The United States will lead."

This may sound like a typical grandiose promise made by a candidate seeking election. But to those in the public health community it offered validation that ending Malaria deaths is not some pie in the sky dream--but a goal that can be achieved in the here and now. Following through on this commitment, however, means that the fight against Malaria must be taken to where the disease is most destructive and most difficult to contain: refugee camps in Africa.

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