The battle against malaria in Africa has now gone online, with the U.N. organizing a group of high-profile Internet insiders to encourage social media envoys to post and tweet for malaria control.
The move is an initiative to harness ICT in the fight against malaria. The group of 24 Internet leaders, which includes Twitter co-founder Biz Stone and Randi Zuckerberg, director of marketing at Facebook, has been selected by the U.N. special envoy for malaria, Ray Chambers, to utilize its influence to focus attention on the disease.
Using their social networks, the leaders are expected to enlist resources required to achieve the U.N. secretary general’s goal of providing all African countries with malaria control intervention by the end of 2010. Social media content and user-driven syndication have proved to be exceptional media assets in generating action behind, elevating awareness of, and increasing resources for global malaria efforts.
Millions of people in Africa are starting to use social media networks including Twitter, Facebook and Tagged. Sub-Saharan Africa is the epicenter of the world’s malaria control activities, with at least 90 percent of malaria deaths occurring on the continent. Every year, there are about 250 million malaria cases in Africa and about 1 million deaths.
The U.N. is hoping that by using the Internet and particularly social networks, they will be able to post malaria campaign information and reach as many people as possible with malaria messages. Through the Internet, the UN will also be able to solicit funds from the donor community for use in the fight against malaria.
"Now is not the time to back down but to keep the pressure on. By doing so we are confident that we will win the fight against malaria," said Pauline Wamulume, Zambia National Malaria Control Center principal information, education and communication officer.
A similar campaign by the U.N. on polio immunization in Africa last year yielded results as many parents turned out to have their children immunized again polio. The U.N. joined forces with pan-African mobile service providers MTN and Zain to send SMS text messages informing millions of subscribers of the activities taking place during the campaign against the disease.
The U.N. has set the international target of reducing deaths due to malaria to near zero by 2015.
Michael Malakata, IDG News Service, March 22, 2010
Source: http://news.idg.no/cw/art.cfm?id=8700BF57-1A64-6A71-CE7CDA0F36B2769E
