World Malaria Day at CCP!

Today is World Malaria Day! The theme of the fourth World Malaria Day - Achieving Progress and Impact - encourages the international community's renewed efforts in making progress towards zero malaria deaths by 2015.

In keeping with this year’s theme, we would like to highlight the Voices for a Malaria-Free Future (Voices) project at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health’s Center for Communication Programs (CCP). Voices rolls out its 485 campaign in the run-up to World Malaria Day, April 25th. 
 
The campaign celebrates the progress made and the return on investment in saving lives – 485 a Day - thanks to proven malaria control interventions that work, sustained funding by national governments, the U.S. and global donors, bold leadership and innovative partnerships across boundaries. For more details, view the 485 campaign fact sheets and Politico Ad.
 
The mission of the Voices project is to bolster advocacy for increased and sustained resources, facilitate stronger global collaboration among partners, and work to eliminate barriers that hinder the success of national malaria control plans in endemic countries. Malaria endemic country advocacy in Voices II emphasizes increased political will, improved policies, stronger management and coordination, while harmonizing with global malaria partnership-building and U.S.-based advocacy. The Voices project leads an integrated, international campaign of advocacy activities to incite and complement advances toward malaria eradication.
 
An important component of sustaining these advances in malaria control involves taking the opportunity to reflect on and learn from success stories. Please check out a few of the positive malaria stories shared on CCP’s website . The stories include:
 
  • Freeing Schools from Malaria in Tanzania
  • Mr. Mosquito and his Wife Come to Visit: Ugandan Students Learn about Malaria
  • Community Change Agents Save Lives in Tanzanian Villages
  • Radio Spots in Senegal Promote Universal Coverage of LLINs
 
Finally, here at the Knowledge for Health (K4Health) Project, we recently published the Peace Corps Malaria Toolkit! This eToolkit was created by Peace Corp Volunteers and staff as a global resource on malaria health education and the logistics of malaria management.
 
As we pause to commemorate the tireless efforts within the international community to control this troubling disease, let's remember the value of cooperation. Working together with singular focus, we greatly increase our chances to count malaria out for good!
 
Ashley Isabelle Spence is a Communications Coordinator at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health’s Center for Communication Programs (CCP) and works on the K4Health Project, which is funded by USAID and implemented by CCP, FHI, and Management Sciences for Health (MSH).