Learning Gives Back

Here is a 3 1/2 minute video from Elliott Masie from the clinics in the villages of Mali. It includes a "thank you" from the children of Mali to the people who donated the Malaria Nets.

Video from Malaria Net Distribution in the Field

Here is a short video with some short clips from our first day in the field here in Mali, Africa

Athlethes Join Us in Mali for Net Distribution

Three wonderful professional sports professionals are in our small delegation here in Mali. We have been pleased to get to know these sports stars and social activists:

Diego Gutierrez, midfielder for Major League Soccer’s (MLS) Chicago Fire

Dwayne De Rosario, midfielder for MLS Houston Dynamo and MLS Cup 2007 MVP;

Ruth Riley, center for Women’s National Basketball Association’s San Antonio Silver Stars and two-time WNBA champion and Olympic Gold Medalist

Diego, Dwayne and Ruth have added a key element to this campaign..a connection to sports and youth. They have been engaged in all of our briefings and are an incredible spokespeople for the Malaria and Health Campaign.

The Logistics of Millions of Nets

Here is how they nets made their way to Mali. I quote Steven Phillips, ExxonMobil's Medical Director for Global Issues and Projects as he tells of the logistics of a campaign to get bed nets, which protect people against malaria, to hundreds of thousands of people.

Here is the story of how each of the 2.26 million nets will make their way into the hands of a pregnant Malian mother and all mothers with children under age five (The nets were funded by a consortium including the U.S. President's Malaria Initiative, the Canadian Red Cross, Malaria No More, and the UN Foundation's Nothing But Nets campaign.):

Orders were placed with a manufacturer who sourced the nets from Vietnam, seven months pre-campaign. The nets were contained and shipped in 58 "high cube containers" (40 x 9-1/2 x 8 feet), from Vietnam to a sorting transit point in Spain. Each container holds about 38,000 nets.

The cargo was sorted and re-loaded to a second ship for its journey through the Straits of Gibraltar and down the West African coast to Dakar, Senegal. It took 55 days for the shipment to arrive in the port of Dakar.

Over the next two to three weeks the cargo was transported over 1,200 kilometers of road and rail to Bamako, Mali. It required a further seven days to clear customs.

The 58 containers were transferred to the only three warehouses in the country large to store them. They filled the three 1100 square-metre warehouses.

The distribution plan called for 40 health districts to receive shipments in six regions of the country over a radius of 600 km from Bamako. A single transport company won the tender and used 60 runs by 40 trucks to deliver bales of uncrated nets. Transport was about 50 percent on "tire roads" which are paved, and 50 percent on unpaved dirt roads. It required ten days to accomplish this phase. Many of the roads would have been impassable in the rainy season. The paradox was striking – the nets could only be delivered reliably during the dry season, when malaria risk is the lowest.

From the 40 district locations nets were subdivided for shipment to 975 health centers. It took one to 10 days to accomplish this. While awaiting trans-shipment, the bales of nets were often subject to "outdoor warehousing" with a hired security guard sitting on top of the bales to prevent theft.

From the health centers, the nets were sent to 2,000-3,000 distribution points with a radius of 5-20 km. This was accomplished via a variety of transportation modes including bicycle, donkey-cart, camel and "push-push", a local cart-like conveyance pushed by human power.

For mothers who could not make it to the final distribution points, mobile teams on bicycles and motorcycles would deliver the nets to their villages and dwellings. In the end, all of Mali's 15,000 villages are covered.

Elapsed time: seven months. Number of people coordinating logistics: six. Lost or damaged nets: none.

First Day in the Field - Malaria Net Distribution

This was a very powerful day, emotionally and physically.

We will post a longer blog entry tomorrow, but it started at 8 AM with a launch of the Malaria campaign with the President of Mali and then we journeyed to several health clinics about one hour north of the city.

At each clinic there was a line of about 100 women, with 1 or 2 children each, to have their child immunized against Polio, dewormed, get Vitamin A and then receive a Malaria Net.

The children and mothers were participating in an unprecedented effort to decrease child mortality. They fully embraced us as visitors and it was so moving to interact and even help to distribute the nets.

Many more images and videos to follow...

Interview with Kass - Mali Resident

Here is an interview with a man in Mali, about the impact of Mosquito Nets on Malaria in his life over the past few years. While there have been adult uses of Nets, the current campaign will extend this to 95% of the infant population from birth to age 5.

Mali Singer Video

We were invited to a special reception the night before the launch of the Malaria lntegrated Health Launch. There was a Mali Band that was awesome. I taped a minute of it to use with a video conference that we did last night to students and faculty at Skidmore College

Sheep for Holy Days

In a few days, there is a very holy celebration here in Mali. One of the traditions is for a family (or a group of families) to slaughter and then eat a sheep. Throughout Bomako there are men taking sheep to market.

A Huge Health Campaign in Mali

The Health Campaign that is about to start here in Mali is huge and historic. In addition to the Malaria Nets that are being distributed, this is actually one of the largest health campaigns aimed at infants in Africa.

Starting in 2 days, every child in Mali under the age of 5 will be the focus of a major campaign that will provide Polio, DeWorming, Vitamin A as well as the Nets. In other words, the campaign will bring comprehensive interventions to every child under the age of 5.

Today, we met our delegation, which is one of dozens of organizations that are supporting this campaign. The donation from our Learning Gives Back efforts at Learning 2007, are part of the Malaria No More component. There are also significant contributions from the Canada Red Cross, the President's Malaria Initiative as well as many others.

Our delegation is great, including Muslin religious leaders from the US, professional soccer and Women's professional basketball.

Landed In Mali

On Monday night, after flights from New York to France to Mali, we landed in Africa.

We were met on the tarmac of the Bamako airport, as the members of the delegations gathered from diverse parts of the world.

There is great excitement about this "Integrated Distribution" that will be distributing the Malaria nets, as well as Measles and other vaccines. There are representatives from the UN, the UN Foundation, Canadian Red Cross, Peace Corps and other agencies.