Rotarians Against Malaria
Last weekend i attended the Rotarians Against Malaria (RAM) conference held in Melbourne.
In attendance were District Chairs from clubs around Australia plus interested Rotarians and some members of Rotaract Australia's Malaria committee. T
The guest speakers were varied and included Edgar Pollard RAM PHD student on his project in the Solomon Islands, Rebecca Feldman from the Victorian Dept of Health and Human Services telling us about the control of mosquitoes in our state, Dr Danielle Stanisic from Griffith University who is researching a vaccine for malaria which they have started clinical trials with and Dr Jack Richards from the Burnett Institute who talked about ways to look at eliminating malaria throughout the world.
Updates were given on the projects being done in PNG, Solomon Islands, Timor Leste and Vanuatu to help towards the elimination of this disease. Michael Shields Chair of the Rotaract Malaria committee also spoke on their involvement to raise much needed funds to help with research, buying bed nets and also making people in the community aware of the projects being done by RAM.
There was also time to network at the dinner held on Saturday night.
Malaria awareness day will be celebrated on the 30th of April next year and any contributions we can make to RAM will help to work towards elimination of this disease.
A very interesting and worthwhile event to attend.