Tools and vision: How ending polio helps fight malaria

By Etelka Lehoczky Photography by Esther Ruth Mbabazi

Health workers in Pakistan go door to door administering the polio vaccine. Volunteers in Zambia perform a dramatic skit showing how malaria spreads. These efforts may seem very different, but they're deeply connected.

A global partnership has mobilized millions of workers, reached underserved populations, and gathered unprecedented amounts of health information in the fight to end polio. That work by the Global Polio Eradication Initiative, of which Rotary is a core partner, is proving crucial in the battle against malaria.

UNICEF estimates that malaria kills a child under age five nearly every minute. "The children are the most susceptible, because they haven't built up any immunity," says Bill Feldt, a chair of Rotary's first US$2 million Programs of Scale award recipient, Partners for a Malaria-Free Zambia.

And yet, malaria is a preventable disease that many believe can be eliminated. Inspired by the GPEI's results and equipped with its tools, health experts and Rotary members are applying its lessons to malaria.

The information challenge

To dramatize the importance of bed nets that have been treated with insecticide to prevent malaria, Rotaractors in Zambia dress up as mosquitoes and act in educational skits. It's a creative way to reach people in an area with a lower literacy rate, and it's based on a lesson from the GPEI: To stop a disease, you've got to dispel misinformation.

"When we began doing polio vaccinations in Ethiopia, this rumor started circulating that the vaccine was meant to sterilize Muslim children," says Jenny Andrews, the executive director of Malaria Partners International. "Rotary was able to bring together a large group of faith leaders, traditional healers, tribal leaders, and medical doctors to do radio and TV ads to overcome that fear. That's one thing we've learned from polio: Instead of waiting for a problem to arise, we get out ahead of it."

There's plenty of misinformation about malaria to counter. When health workers spray rural homes with insecticide, the clouds of bugs that emerge can suggest that mosquitoes are being summoned, not killed. When bed nets are given away, people may not realize they're free. And many people don't realize that leaving an infection untreated puts others at risk.

"Sometimes, if they have malaria and they live far away from a health facility, they'll say, 'Oh well, I've had it before, I'll just hang on,'" says Jim Moore, a founding board member of Malaria Partners International. "Part of it is educating people that they should get tested for malaria if they're feeling sick. Because if they get bitten by [another] mosquito, the parasite can be transmitted from them to the mosquito, and then to their neighbors and family members.

"You are essentially training local leaders — religious leaders, business leaders, tribal leaders — to understand how malaria gets transmitted," he adds.

Thanks to Rotary's polio work, members already have strong relationships with those leaders. Ezra Teshome, a past district governor for District 5030, has been leading Rotary delegations on polio immunization trips to Ethiopia, Uganda, and Kenya since 1997. He says working effectively against malaria is a matter of getting key officials involved. Fortunately, he already knows just whom to talk to.

"The success of my work in East Africa is really due to connecting with the right people," Teshome says. "We've gotten the blessing of the minister of health, the prime minister, and the president's office in these countries. Those kinds of connections make it easier to help the health workers." Click Here to read more.