Malaria: Blood, Sweat and Tears

Telling someone they can save a life just by sending a net is one thing, but showing them the faces of those in need is another thing entirely. The multimedia exhibit “Malaria: Blood, Sweat and Tears” features a collection of far-reaching photographs from Adam Nadel, an award-winning photographer, and highlights many examples of how lives have been affected by this disease. Every image carries a personal story from Nadel’s travels to countries such as Cambodia, Nigeria and Uganda.

The exhibit, on display now in the Main Gallery of the Visitors Lobby at the United Nations Headquarters in New York, not only humanizes this important issue, but also provides important educational information on malaria and what can be done to prevent it as we push forward to achieve the Millennium Development Goals by 2015. The exhibit was set up by the Malaria Consortium, an organization dedicated to malaria control, with generous support from Vestergaard Frandsen S.A., an emergency response and disease-control company that manufactures bed nets, the Roll Back Malaria (RBM) Partnership, the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF), the World Health Organization (WHO), the World Bank, and the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP). It also features a plaque honoring the UN Foundation’s Nothing But Nets campaign.

More than half of the world’s population is at risk of contracting malaria, with women and children at particular risk. Every year it kills more than 860,000 people with 90 percent of all malaria deaths occurring in Africa. Help raise awareness of this disease by attending a special viewing of “Malaria: Blood, Sweat and Tears” at 6 p.m. on Wednesday, April 21, in the lead-up to World Malaria Day on April 25, and don’t forget that something as simple as sending a net can help save lives.