It is pretty amazing that a disease that wreaks so much havoc across wide stretches of our planet is actually prevented with relative ease. A bug net. A freaking bug net is all it takes to save life after life after life. Mosquitoes may be just a summertime evening nuisance for you, but in many regions, quite notably across Africa, their stinging little proboscises (or is it probosci?) are loaded with contagion. Malaria, killer of so many, is quite efficiently passed by mosquito bites. So efficiently, that a child dies from the disease every 45 seconds. It is why your doctor prescribes the weird dream/nightmare inducing anti-malarial drugs when you travel to certain regions, but of course those drugs are cost-prohibitive for most people in the world. Your Deep Woods Off or Skin So Soft bug spray is also the repellent of the wealthy…but a simple physical barrier…a net for sleeping, makes numbers of malaria cases plummet in communities that have them. The World Health Organization has shown a 10% decrease from last year in malaria deaths in African regions that are starting to get nets.
Today is End Malaria Day. Organizations like Malaria No More and Nothing But Nets are on the ground, distributing sleeping nets in threatened communities around the world. You don’t need to pack your bags to go hand out nets and educate locals about how to properly use them to prevent mosquito bites, but you really do want to support this work. It is immediate and tangible. On the day a family gets a net or nets for their home/hut/shelter…THAT NIGHT, when they go to sleep under their new net…they are protected in a way they never were before. It is so simple, so “actionable” that there is really no reason not to be part of the solution. End Malaria: The Book is coming out today–in it, 62 of today’s sharpest minds write essays of inspiration and motivation. For every copy sold, twenty bucks goes directly to anti-malaria organizations. (The Kindle edition only costs $20 so every penny is donated. The paperback is $25). You give a few bucks…you get inspiration for your own day-to-day life…you save lives, directly and demonstrably. There’s really no lose here.
Change by Doing 