(Today’s blog entry is by Ervin Dyer of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette:)

I was up Monday morning, dragging my tired butt and aching back down to breakfast at the Peacock hotel. The fried eggs were runny and our table mate, Bob Butler told us he had lost his luggage flying into Tanzania from South Africa. Neither was the worst news of the day. Here to learn about malaria in the East African nation, Bob succinctly summed up the grimmest news of all.

 

“Malaria real bad,” he dead-toned. “Don’t get it.”

 

Boy, was he right. It is horrible. In fact, by the time you will have finished reading this sentence,  another child will have died of malaria in Africa. You see, on this continent, every 30 seconds a young child dies from a mosquito bite that deposits a lethal dose of parasites to the blood stream.

 

Those who survive, are lucky. Their bodies go on to develop a type of immunity that leaves them vulnerable to malaria, but able to get pass its energy-sucking symptoms and body aches. Millions of others are not so lucky.

 

Malaria, unlike HIV/AIDS or cancer, is a silent epidemic. There are few globally-recognized advocates screaming about its ugly reality. (Angelina Jolie, where are you?) Yet, it is a disease that impacts 100 million people a year, causing 30 million deaths. More than HIV/AIDS. More than cancer. More than tuberculosis.

 

Many of those dying are women and children. We know this because we are traveling in Tanzania and medical experts and government officials tell us this East African nation is considered by many to be ground zero for malaria because it has 100,000 deaths a year from the disease. “If there is a terrorist, our terrorist is malaria,” said Dr. Andrew Kitua, director of Tanzania’s National Institute for Medical Research in Dar Es Salaam. “In this country, there are 270 people dying everyday.”

 

We’re up early every morning for a difficult round of lectures and roundtable discussions regarding this fact. The news is not exactly pleasant breakfast fare. But is hopeful that so many care and are breaking the silence to fight.

 

After breakfast, we board a 20-seater bus and head over to the century Ministry of Information building where chief officer Joel Bendera tells us that Tanzania is making the fight against malaria is a global one. The office is using the power of sports to make a difference; using soccer stars and a flashy campaign aimed at youth and local sports leagues to urge families to invest in bed nets to protect from mosquitoes.

 

Much of our conversation is brutally raw and are reminiscent of discussions in the United States regarding health care disparities. Here, though, the morbidity and mortality seem more desperate.

 

“Nobody cares about poor black babies in Africa,” said Louis Da Gama, an energetic Brit with Global Health Advocates, an international NGO focusing on malaria, AIDS and tuberculosis. “Is an African child not worth $2.50?” he asks, questioning the decision of global funders who don’t offer enough to a provide.

 

“I’m tired of going to rural clinics,” he said. “Sick and tired of going to rural clinics where mom’s give me their children and I give them back knowing the babies are going to die.”

 

Well, we’re discovering that while it may not make for the most pleasant breakfast fare, lots of people care and they want more to do the same. Bob was right, “Malaria real bad.”

 

What we know now is that pitching in to prevent and treat this terrible disease is real good.