We’re AMPed to learn where nets are needed

Last week, members of the Nothing But Nets team travelled to the annual meeting of the Alliance for Malaria Prevention in Geneva, Switzerland. The Alliance for Malaria Prevention (AMP) is a global partnership of more than 40 organizations, with a goal of expanding ownership and use of insecticide-treated bed nets by working together to coordinate and stragegize where nets are needed, and who can help send them.

The annual AMP meeting is a great opportunity for leaders in government, private sector, academia and not-for-profit organizations to collaborate, learn, track progress towards universal bed net coverage and to figure out how we can continue to scale up and maintain momentum, despite a tough economy. 

Partners highlighted the success stories in Sierra Leone, Ghana, Cameroon, Senegal, Guinea-Bissau — and the list goes on — where bed net use has reached 90 percent in some locations. Many of these countries have received bed nets from Nothing But Nets over the last five years thanks to supporters like you. (Want to learn more about where you’ve helped us send nets? Check out our net map!)

In addition, we’re seeing how much the awareness and education components of bed net distributions are paying off. More people than ever know how to properly hang and care for their nets — and most of all, they know how important it is to sleep under nets to protect themselves from malaria. 

This meeting also looked toward the future — and how to deal with a financial picture that is not as promising as it has been in the past. For example, only 91 million nets were distributed in 2011 compared to 145 million in 2010 (almost 1 million of those nets were sent by Nothing But Nets supporters!). With the average net lasting around 3 years, we discussed ways in which we can either extend the life of a net, show people how to repair the nets they have, or send them replacement nets. 

The fight against malaria is far from over, but Nothing But Nets, together with our partners, have made an incredible, lasting impact toward ending malaria deaths in Africa. We look forward to continuing our ongoing collaboration – because together, we can be the generation to end malaria deaths.