White Paper: Characteristics of Polyester vs. Polyethylene Nets In light of UN Secretary General Ban Kim Moon's call for universal coverage of malaria control in Africa by end-2010, a White Paper was developed, "Characteristics of Polyester vs. Polyethylene Nets."
http://ent.groundspring.org/EmailNow/pub.php?module=URLTracker&cmd=track&j=218484448&u=2264054
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Marcy Bloom
mailto:marcybloom@comcast.net
Dear Colleagues
I saw this net strength report a short time ago, and wrote a quick note in response as follows:
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This is interesting ... it reminds me of work that we used to do in connection with my work as the CFO of an international fishing company a good number of years ago.
Clearly if the fishing net broke and would not work, then the question of strength was an important parameter. But I was much more concerned about how much I had to pay for the net, and how much fish we could catch ... and specifically the value of the fish.
Does anyone have accessible data about (1) how much it is costing to buy nets now compared to past months and years, and (2) how much malaria burden is being reduced.
Two one liners seem to be in play: (1) fund flows have increased from around $100 million a year to more than $1 billion a year, and future need is globally around $4 billion a year, with around $2 billion for Africa for the foreseeable future and (2) 3,000 children die of malaria in Africa every day ... one every 30 seconds.
What is worrisome is that there is rapid growth in spending money, and yet nobody is talking about the 3,000 a day becoming 300 a day any time soon. My take on this is that there is a dangerous malaria industry bubble that has developed and no metrics to control it. My expectation is that some places are doing well, and some are not ... but with the prevailing management regime, nobody seems to know much about what works and what does not, what costs are and what they should be, etc. Some of the information that is becoming available suggests that results are "spotty" ... which is to be expected ... but I don't see data that help explain why and what should be done about it.
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I hope my observations are not out of place ... it seems that quite substantial fund flows are not having much of an impact. Good quality hard data about progress resulting from bednet distribution is hard to find, yet there seems to be better performance outcomes from IRS especially where DDT is used. But why is this information a highly guarded state secret ... or are the results just plain embarrassing.
Sincerely
Peter Burgess
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Peter Burgess
The Transparency and Accountability Network: Tr-Ac-Net in New York
http://www.tr-ac-net.org
Community Accountancy
Integrated Malaria Management Consortium (IMMC)
917 432 1191 or 212 772 6918
mailto:peterbnyc@gmail.com