Posted on February 15, 2009

'Nothing But Nets' Receives $1.2 Million for Malaria Prevention in Kenya

The United Nations Foundation has announced that supporters of its Nothing But Nets campaign to prevent malaria have raised more than $1.2 million to provide some 273,000 refugees in four camps in Kenya with insecticide-treated nets.

The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees expects to distribute the 128,000 nets over the next few weeks, before the onset of the summer's rainy season. Malaria is the number one killer of refugees in Africa.

In September 2008, UNHCR identified an urgent need for 275,000 long-lasting insecticide-treated bed nets for refugees living in twenty-seven refugee camps in Uganda, Sudan, Kenya, and Tanzania. The targeted camps have the highest malaria burden among all African refugee camps, whose primary occupants are women and children.

"I am thankful to the thousands of individuals who have donated as little as $10 to send these life-saving bed nets," said Nothing But Nets director Adrianna Logalbo. "The refugees I've met with have survived displacement, discrimination, and sometimes war — they should not then die of a malaria infection caused by a mosquito bite."