Malaria is a widespread tropical and subtropical mosquito-bone infectious disease and can be found in the Americas, Asia and Africa. There are approximately 350 million and 500 million cases reported per year and it kills between one million and three million people.
According to the United Nations Foundation Nothing But Nets
, one child dies of malaria every 30 seconds. Since 2001 the Measles Initiative
has distributed millions of bed nets to children in Africa in order to prevent the disease.
The UN campaign was created in 2006 and has cooperated with numerous partners and thousands of supporters, including UNICEF, the World Health Organization, the United Methodist Church and many others.
Two years later, the campaign joined the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) to expand the program and send more preventive bed nets to refugees in Africa. By the end of 2009, Nothing But Nets had sent more than one million nets to the African continent.
On World Malaria Day, thousands of people around the globe participated in The Sleep Out to End Malaria
. The initiative, which took place in various locations across the United States, Zimbabwe, South Korea and others, would help end malaria deaths by 2015. Volunteers are now organizing an autumn Sleep Out to End Malaria on a large number of university campuses.
On Sunday, the UN Nothing But Nets campaign made a Buzz Tour bus stop in downtown Toronto at the Yonge-Dundas Square
and provided information to bystanders on the crucial health issue in Africa and the organization.
The bus was converted from a school bus and is fuelled on waste vegetable oil and outfitted with solar panels. Volunteers urged people to contribute $10 to join the “global fight against malaria.” The money would send a preventive bed net to Africa.
So far, more than 3.1 million bed nets have been sent.