Joy to the World: One Million Nets!

Jan 01, 2009 | by Rob Radtke, President, Episcopal Relief & Development

Three years after delivering the first Long-Lasting Insecticide-Treated Net (LLITN) to a remote community “at the end of the road” in rural Zambia, NetsforLife® has distributed its one millionth net.

My colleague, Shaun Walsh, executive director of NetsforLife®, was in Kisumu, Kenya, to mark the occasion. There was much dancing and singing to mark this joyous occasion.

Working Together to Fight Malaria

As most of you know, Episcopal Relief & Development is an implementing partner of NetsforLife®. However, reaching this milestone would not have been possible without our other partners: the ExxonMobil Foundation, Standard Chartered Bank, Coca-Cola Africa Foundation, The Starr International Foundation, White Flowers Foundation and Christian Aid.

In addition, none of what has been accomplished could have come to pass without the hard work of all of our Anglican Church partners in the field whose experience, local knowledge and incredible efforts at mobilization have paved the way for NetsforLife®’s success.

Along with this momentous achievement, we have trained a veritable army of local volunteer malaria agents across 15 countries in Sub-Saharan Africa. These dedicated individuals work on the front lines of net distribution and community education on net use, malaria prevention and symptom recognition. They are the eyes, ears, hearts and feet of NetsforLife®, and we all should be profoundly grateful for their life-saving efforts.

Instilling a Net Culture

Besides distributing nets and training people to work in communities with their friends, colleagues and neighbors on malaria prevention, NetsforLife® has achieved remarkable success in instilling a “net culture” in communities that previously were unaware of the benefits of sleeping under a Long-Lasting Insecticide-Treated Net.

In all of its countries of implementation, NetsforLife® has recorded astonishing increases in people’s awareness of malaria prevention, symptom recognition and environmental management to control malaria.

Most dramatically, overall use of bed nets among those most vulnerable to malaria—children and pregnant women—has increased on average from 12% to 88% in the communities where NetsforLife® is present.

Making a Difference: NetsforLife®

In addition, our third-party evaluators report that in communities where NetsforLife® is present:

• Four out of five households have at least one Long-Lasting Insecticide-Treated Net.
• Nine out of 10 children under five years of age slept under a net the night before the random monitoring and evaluation took place.
• Four out of five pregnant women slept under a net the night before the random monitoring and evaluation took place.

Based on this kind of impact, our third-party evaluators estimate that between 2006 and 2008 the lives of approximately 12,000 children under age five were saved as a result of NetsforLife®.

Saving Lives

These statistics certainly are impressive. However, it was what one of the priests where we work said to Dr. Stephen Dzisi, the NetsforLife® technical director, which really hit it home for me:

“Before NetsforLife® came to this area, community members used to wake me up in the middle of the night at least four times every month to baptize and anoint a sick child—only to bury him or her the next day. However, since the program started, such midnight calls have ceased. I believe that NetsforLife® is saving lives.”

The Power of Partnership

Everyone in the Episcopal Church and the Anglican Communion can be deeply gratified by these results and give thanks for the work we have been able to do together. Nothing demonstrates to me more profoundly the power of partnership. Together we can eliminate malaria and heal a hurting world.

Gloria in Excelsis Deo!