Why Should I Care?

According to the World Health Organization malaria kills more than 1 million individuals each year, most of them children. It afflicts another 300-500 million each year with pain and suffering.

The number one question we’ve been asked the past few years and yesterday goes something like this:

“Why are you doing this, with all the problems we have right here in America, why should I care about malaria and people on the other side of the world? Why don’t you guys do something that’s good for this country?”

Fundamentally, our answer lies in the ideals and principles expressed by Jimmy Stewart in “Mr. Smith Goes to Washington”

“Because of just one, plain, simple rule: Love thy neighbor. And in this world today, full of hatred, a man who knows that one rule has a great trust. You know that rule, Mr. Paine, and I loved you for it, just as my father did. And you know that you fight for the lost causes harder than for any others.”

We modern Skeeter Beaters feel that great trust in our hearts and feel we are the only ones in a position to realize the potential of a sustained grass-roots movement. If we don’t take the lead and bring the fight to the people there is no one else who will, who cares, or who can.

The last few years has seen a rise in efforts in the United States and other developed countries to unite private and governmental resources in raising hundreds of millions of dollars while attempting to elevate media and thereby, public awareness to the seriousness of the disease.

However, inefficient global operations and infrastructures along with poor oversight have encouraged waste and thievery, which is to be expected from a top-down approach versus our grass-roots bottoms-up implementation.

  1. Governments, the United Nations, and Corporate Personalities won’t solve anything by throwing more and more money at the problem hoping some of it does some good while not willing to be accountable to make sure it does.
  2. Governments, the United Nations, and Corporate Personalities are heavily invested in public relations and making themselves look kind-hearted and socially concerned. The art of selling the sizzle instead of the steak is built on the premise that people are too ignorant and greedy to know the difference.
  3. Good health matters to all of us in the United States. Disease, suffering, and death do not observe national borders.
  4. The number of transient cases of malaria diagnosed in the United States is on the rise. At the rate new cases are diagnosed, malaria is on the verge of once again becoming the threat in our country that it posed in the 1930’s and 1940’s. http://www.cdc.gov/ncidod/eid/vol4no3/gubler.htm
  5. Malaria hampers children’s schooling and social development through both absenteeism and neurological and physical damage associated with severe episodes of the disease.
  6. It is in our economic interest to care about global health because decreased productivity in one part of the world affects economies elsewhere.
  7. The risks of contracting malaria in endemic areas of the world deters economic investment and curtails economic growth and productivity.
  8. US efforts to improve global health serve as a powerful diplomatic tool.