Delta Airlines supports Malaria Prevention

Delta Airlines supports Malaria Prevention

By Mohammed Awal

Delta Airlines has launched a Malaria Prevention Scheme dubbed ‘Hang-up and keep-up Campaign’ as part of its Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) project to ensure eradication of malaria through the distribution of treated insecticide mosquito nets.

At a press conference held in Accra on Tuesday, to officially unveil the campaign, vice president for sales and customer care at Delta Air Lines, Perry Cantarutti revealed that the exercise would be done in partnership with the Ghana Red Cross Society.

The project, he said, would distribute a total of 4000 insecticide mosquito nets to about 8000 beneficiary households in the Greater Accra and Upper East regions respectively.

The main target of the initiative he said would be to reach out to children under five years of age and pregnant women thus ensuring that malaria is totally eradicated from the system.

According to statistics by Develop Africa, a Non-Governmental Organization (NGO), “malaria is a leading cause of death of children in Africa, killing nearly one million children per year” adding that every day, 3000 children die from the disease.

Also, the Center for Disease Control and Prevention revealed that malaria is the 5th cause of death from infectious diseases worldwide (after respiratory infections, HIV/AIDS, diarrhea diseases, and tuberculosis).  

Malaria is the 2nd leading cause of death from infectious diseases in Africa, after HIV/AIDS. According to The Global Fund, malaria is caused by five species of parasitic protozoans of the genus Plasmodium that affect humans. Plasmodium parasites are transmitted to humans by the bite of infected female Anopheles mosquitoes.

Children under five and pregnant women, the NGO noted, are mostly severely affected by malaria, as their immune system is less able to fight Plasmodium infection.

The NGO said: “currently malaria is endemic in 99 countries causing an estimated 219 million cases and 660,000 deaths per year, with about 80 percent of the cases and 90 percent of the deaths occurring in Africa.

The Secretary General of the Ghana Red Cross Society (GRCS), Samuel Kofi Addo expressed his delightfulness with the partnership promising that the GRCS would ensure the nets are used with the main purpose of “eradicating” malaria from the system.