Malaria Bites

Below, you'll find the digital movie I made with Compassion and Youth Specialties (and the talented Brian Boyle) as the year began.

In 1983, when I first engaged the conversation about ending poverty, the working number of deaths due to preventable causes was about 42,000 per day — these are fatalities statisticians lump together as excess deaths, meaning they don't have to happen. Causes of excess deaths include war, water-borne illnesses, preventable and treatable infections — things like that. In 2007, despite all hell breaking loose in a lot of places on planet earth, the number of excess deaths was about 27,000 a day. 27,000 needless deaths every day is stunning and inexcusable. It's also a third fewer than in 1983. As Scott Todd, the very bright man who directs Compassion's Special Operations (including HIV/AIDS and Malaria Interventions) told me: "If we can shrink it from 40,000 to 27,000, there's no reason to believe we can't shrink it from 27,000 to zero."

This video describes in four and a half minutes how malaria deaths — about a million of them a year and way more children than adults — can be stopped cold for less money than the U.S. spends every week in Iraq.



This is as close to a no-brainer as I've ever seen...
Malaria bites. Buy a net. Save a life. Bite Back