Innovative Health Campaigns
The statistics are staggering: Millions of children under the age of 5 die each year from preventable diseases, including malaria, measles and polio. A solution exists: innovative health campaigns. Our campaign goals range from raising awareness and resources to delivering vaccines and other preventive interventions. These dynamic efforts typically include diverse partners, creative communications and on-the-ground service providers and are focused on concrete goals, including UN Millennium Development Goal #4: reduce child mortality.
ELIMINATING MALARIA DEATHS
Malaria can be prevented. A single long-lasting insecticide-treated bed net can protect a family of four. Malaria can be treated. Medicine exists to help people recover from the infection. Malaria deaths can be eliminated. Diverse partnerships—in coordination with key UN agencies—are looking at different strategies to do this by the next generation. We combat malaria through:
REDUCING MEASLES MORTALITY
Despite recent outbreaks in the United States and the United Kingdom, measles has all but been eliminated in parts of the world. But it still kills more than 242,000 people globally each year, mainly children under 5. One solution is integrated, countrywide measles campaigns carried out by country governments with support from the Measles Initiative. These large-scale, coordinated efforts, organized by the Measles Initiative, are aimed at reducing measles deaths by 90 percent. Learn more »
ERADICATING POLIO
Polio can be eradicated; less than 1,500 new cases are reported each year. As we get closer to wiping this disease off the map, literally, the work only gets harder. Most of the children who are infected aren’t located in one place but instead are spread across dozens of remote communities in India and Nigeria. It takes a global effort to end this disease forever, which is why we support the Global Polio Eradication Initiative. Learn more »
LATEST STORY OF IMPACT
Net distribution impact reaches far & wide
Area of Involvement: Children’s Health
In the fall of 2008, our Nothing But Nets campaign helped to distribute 855,000 insecticide-treated bed nets as part of an integrated measles campaign in Côte d’Ivoire, reaching all corners of the country - the towns, the beaches, and the most rural outlying areas. The crowds of children and families waiting for their nets, smiling as they thank the health workers and volunteers, singing and dancing and crying, all tell a story of how a blue bed net is making a difference– it’s keeping them alive.
