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Alexander Soucy is correct to identify insecticide-treated bednets and inexpensive anti-malarial drugs as crucial to the global fight against malaria (‘An easy way to save three million lives,’ April 26).

Canada has been a leader in promoting these measures. In 1994, CIDA and Canada’s International Development Research Centre (IDRC) joined with the World Health Organization in funding the first large-scale trials testing the effectiveness of treated bednets. Those successful trials led to the adoption of bednets as the main pillar of Africa’s malaria prevention strategy beginning in 2000.

Canadian-funded initiatives in Tanzania provide clear evidence that dealing effectively with malaria can drastically reduce death rates. For example, a package of health reforms known as the Tanzania Essential Health Interventions Project (TEHIP) refocused district health funding on preventing and treating key health threats such as malaria — primarily through the distribution of bednets and provision of anti-malarial drugs. The astonishing result of these measures was a more than 40 per cent decline in child mortality in the districts where they were implemented.

Today, Tanzania is developing a ‘culture’ of bednet use. While treated bednets were once rare, in 2004 alone Tanzanians purchased more than 2.3 million of them. Shown to reduce the risk of malaria by 50 per cent, these treated nets are now being distributed free of charge to vulnerable pregnant women through a voucher system.

Such measures deserve increased international support and should be extended to more countries where malaria poses a public health risk. Still largely unrecognized as one of the major killers of our time, malaria is a disease — so experience shows — that can be controlled through the application of low-cost and mostly low-tech solutions.

Maureen O’Neil
President
International Development Research Centre

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