More on Malaria -- It really is a preventable disease.

One of the places I teach is at the University of Sciences in Philadelphia, in the Department of Biomedical Writing. The Chair of Biomedical Writing is Susanna Dodgson and she is an amazing woman -- you can see her talking about her program at Pharmed Out, an independent, publicly funded project that empowers physicians to identify and counter inappropriate pharmaceutical promotion practices, and who we just added to our blogroll.

In addition to teaching and being the department chair, she is the Editor-in-Chief of the Medical Journal of Therapeutics Africa, and she has recently taken on the cause of eradicating malaria. She went on location in Lagos, Nigeria and produced, with the help of faculty and students of the Biomedical Writing program, this great video why malaria should be and continue to be a major world health concern and just how malaria can be prevented:



We had posted earlier about World Malaria Day and Blackout for Malaria on Facebook, but Susanna's video is a reminder that one day isn't enough. Go, Susanna!

Today is World Malaria Day

Today is the first-ever World Malaria Day, which organizers hope will raise our collective awareness about this disease. The mosquito-borne illness kills more than a million people a year, mostly infants, children, and pregnant women in sub-Saharan Africa. According to the World Health Organization, that's one child every 30 seconds. These deaths occur despite the fact that malaria is a preventable and treatable condition.

Insecticide-treated bed nets keep the skeeters off sleepers and reduce the rate of infection. You can donate one--heck, they cost a paltry 10 bucks apiece! Donate a few!--at Malaria No More, here.

[Editor's note: And if you are on Facebook, please join in Project Blackout: One Million Faces Against Malaria today.]