UNITED
NATIONS, April
25 -- Why did
the number of
malaria bed
nets
distributed in
Africa fall
from 145
million in
2010 to only
66
million last
year?
Thursday
was
World Malaria
Day -- WMD, to
some -- so
Inner City
Press asked at
the UN's noon
briefing about
bed nets, and
about the
failure of the
“MassiveGood”
fundraising
trumpeted by
Philippe
Douste-Blazy,
former French
foreign
minister and
now
sometime-UN
official.
Both
questions were
addressed by
Ray Chambers,
with the long
title of
“Special Envoy
of
Secretary-General
Ban Ki-Moon
for Malaria
and for
the Financing
of the
Health-related
Millennium
Development
Goals.”
Inner
City
Press asked
Chambers about
MassiveGood
back on
December 14,
2010,
here.
OThursday,
Chambers said
he hadn't
heard anything
about
MassiveGood
for the past
year.
Exactly
--
it closed
down, albeit
quietly, in
November 2011.
What's
Douste-Blazy
doing now?
(Other than this
hiring, on
which the UN
only
answered Inner
City Press on
New Years Eve,
here.)
On
bed nets,
Chambers said
that there had
been a push
for as many
nets
as possible in
2010, which
inevitably led
to a fall-off
afterward.
Then the
Global Fund
had to be
“re-structured”
-- a diplomat
word, that --
and so there
was less money
to buy nets.
But
now, he said,
it is turned
around. In the
first quarter
of 2013, some
36 million
nets were
produced,
which he
projected to
140 million on
the year. And
they will be
needed: the
children
who've slept
under
nets since
2010 now have
no immunity at
all.
Chambers
explained
that there's a
move to nets
that last
longer than
three
years, but
that will
require more
“tensile
strength” to
avoid
breaking when
kicked at by a
child. But
that makes the
nets heavier,
and hotter to
sleep under,
leading some
to then not
use them.
Joy
Phumaphi,
Executive
Secretary of
the African
Leaders
Malaria
Alliance,
added that
there's a move
to standardize
net size,
which
will make them
cheaper to
produce,
rather than
trying to
tailor the
size of nets
to different
regions and
preferences.
The whole ten
minute exchange
is here,
from Minute
27:22.
On
fundraising,
Chambers
recounted
going to
Washington
last week, to
meet Senator
Lindsey Graham
and then, drum
roll, Obama
adviser
Valerie
Jarrett last
Friday.
Chambers
screened the
trailer of
“Mary and
Martha,” a
movie
involving
malaria that
premiered on
HBO on
Saturday. Call
it
World Malaria
Week, with the
less tainted
acronym WMW.
Watch this
site.
, 
