Thanks for making malaria a priority

We have some exciting news. Over the past two weeks, the Appropriations Committees in both the House of Representatives and the Senate showed their strong support for ending malaria.

In the State and Foreign Operations appropriations bills, the committee robustly funded programs like the President’s Malaria Initiative and the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria, which combined with funding for the United Nations and UN agencies, will protect and save millions of lives in the fight against malaria. It has been a true team effort to make it to this point. 

A child dies every 60 seconds from malaria. As a father and an advocate, I want to thank Congress and the House and Senate Appropriations Committees and Subcommittees for prioritizing these life-saving programs as part of the Fiscal Year 2015 spending for State and Foreign Operations.

I also want to thank you, our Nothing But Nets supporters for raising your voice. Showing your representatives in Washington that you care about these issues through your calls, letters, and in-district meetings played a huge role in their decisions to fund these programs.

Here are the details:

• Both the House and Senate recommend the Global Fund, a Nothing But Nets partner, be funded at $1.35 billion. The programs the Global Fund supports have distributed 360 million live-saving bed nets since 2002. That’s a lot of lives protected!
• The House recommends the President’s Malaria Initiative receive a total of $674 million– an increase of $9 million from last year. The President’s Malaria Initiative works in 19 countries in sub-Saharan Africa and has procured more than $123 million insecticide-treated bed nets since 2005.
• Both the House and Senate continue to support the life-saving work of UNICEF, another Nothing But Nets partner.  It is recommended that UNICEF maintain the funding level it received last year, keeping funding at $132 million.

Again, I am excited, but we aren’t finished just yet. The House and Senate have to come together and iron out the differences between their bills. Until then, I want to thank you and Congress for making defeating malaria a priority. There were some very tough decisions to make during this budget process. Nothing But Nets is incredibly grateful that Congress has committed to continue U.S. support for malaria programs like PMI and the Global Fund and for UN agencies like UNICEF that do such great work to save lives from this disease!