In November 2007 Senator Jaffer partnered with malaria prevention not-for-profit organization Buy-a-Net. The group’s founder is registered nurse Debra Lefebvre, a Canadian nurse who founded the organization in 2004 to make a difference in the lives of African’s by supplying anti-malaria nets and training, “One African village at a time until the job is done,” says Lefebvre.
The situation in Africa is dismal: 3,000 African children die each day from malaria making it the largest killer of children under the age of five in sub-Saharan Africa. This equates to losing the life of an African child every 30 seconds from this preventable disease.
Senator Jaffer had a rare opportunity to witnesses this illness first hand while travelling in Uganda during the Commonwealth Summit in November 2007. While in the country, she visited villages and participated in a malaria net distribution with Buy-A-Net at Mulago Hospital’s Oncology unit. “It was heartbreaking to see a three year old child with a huge cancerous tumour on her neck beating the cancer, only to die that day of malaria,” said the Senator.
Currently, members of the Buy-a-Net organization are on the ground in Uganda trying to supply 7.5 million bed nets. The Buy-a-Net team is lean, local, efficient and effective. To-date they have installed and committed over 20,000 anti-malaria bed nets. “The job is far from finished and too large for them to tackle on their own, quite simply they could use some help,” says Jaffer.
On Valentine’s Day Senator Jaffer teamed up with Ontario Senator Hugh Segal to sponsor a briefing session for Canadian Parliamentarians, as well as help Buy-A-Net launch its “Have a Heart for Buy-A-Net Campaign”. “The event was a huge success: I believe we raised awareness and questions are starting to evolve as what Canada is doing and needs to do regarding malaria prevention in Africa,” said Senator Jaffer. She continued, “Investing in malaria prevention and control is amazingly good value for our Canadian aid dollar, given that for just $6.00 you can save a life.
More Canadian aid dollars need to go towards malaria prevention. It would be ideal if CIDA would develop a special program to fund it. Since 2003, CIDA says its funding has enabled the distribution of 4.1 million nets in Africa. Last year, CIDA provided 875,000 bed nets through the Red Cross in Sierra Leone.
There are 30 million people in Uganda alone, so it is important to put the amount of this aid into perspective. One net can cast a net over a family of four people for five years. To cast a bed net over Uganda alone would cost $45 million dollars.
It is a sad reality that CIDA could be doing more, but what little programming it has for this illness has been vulnerable to cuts, while organizations like the World Health Organization and the Red Cross have appealed for Canada to do more.
It is a certainty the money CIDA has spent on malaria prevention has been ground breaking and widely praised, which is a clear signal that it should be doing more.
Links:
Buy-A-Net:
http://www.buyanet.ca/
News Release: Feb 14-08 - Malaria Prevention Campaign Covers Parliament Hill With Valentines Message for Canadians - "Have a Heart - Buy-A-Net" http://www.buyanet.ca/blog/2008/feb/14/valentines-2008/