Millennium Promise: Extreme Poverty Ends Here

Today is World Malaria Day, a day to commemorate global efforts to control this devastating disease. More than a million people, most of them children, die each year from malaria. In Africa, a child dies every 30 seconds from this disease. Malaria also affects productivity - annual economic loss in Africa due to the disease is estimated to be $12 billion - trapping many communities in continuing poverty.

As part of Millennium Promise's commitment to the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) - eight globally endorsed objectives that address the multi-dimensional nature of extreme poverty - we recognize the adverse impact malaria has on achieving the MDGs in Africa:

MDG 1: Eradicate extreme poverty and hunger
Malaria strikes workers most severely during the rainy season, creating a devastating impact on agricultural productivity and income generation.

MDG 2: Achieve universal primary education
Malaria causes children and teachers to miss school and is the leading cause of absenteeism in areas where malaria is highly endemic.

MDG 4: Reduce child mortality
In Africa, malaria is the single leading cause of death for children under five.


MDG 5: Improve maternal health Pregnant women and their unborn children are particularly vulnerable to malaria, which, during pregnancy, is a major cause of mortality, low birth weight and maternal anemia.

MDG 6 : Combat HIV/AIDS, malaria and other diseases
Defeating malaria is an achievable first step to this goal.

Millennium Promise's flagship initiative, the Millennium Villages project, works with rural communities in Africa to simultaneously implement critical interventions that tackle the major causes that lead to extreme poverty. Part of this initiative is providing mosquito bed nets to prevent malaria and medicines to treat it. Key achievements in this area include:

Through a donation of 336,000 bed nets from Sumitomo Chemical, health workers have distributed enough bed nets to cover 100% of the sleeping sites in the villages;

Through donations from Novartis and Sanofi-Aventis, village health facilities received more than 440,000 doses of malaria drugs to treat villagers;

Because of these interventions, malaria cases have declined by as much as 75% in some of the villages.

Millennium Promise is also proud to be a founding partner of Malaria No More, a grassroots movement whose mission is to end deaths due to malaria. As part of this year's Idol Gives Back charity special, American Idol fans have so far contributed more than $60 million, a portion of which will go to Malaria No More to distribute life-saving bed nets to people across Africa.

With your help, we can defeat this disease, bringing us one step closer to achieving the Millennium Development Goals and ending extreme poverty.

With deep thanks for your continued support,






Jeffrey S. Flug
Chief Executive Officer
Millennium Promise

To support Millennium Promise CLICK HERE