Armed with a simple $5 solution, a team of health officials from the Baltimore area are aiming to save thousands of Tanzanians from contracting a deadly disease.
Led by St. Joseph Medical Center in Towson, the team will travel to villages in the East African nation this month to deliver 62,000 insecticide-treated bed nets to ward off mosquitos carrying malaria.
“We want 100 percent of the people to have nets,” said John Tolmie, the medical center’s chief executive officer.
“Hopefully this will work and can be replicated to other parts of the district.”
The nets are part of St. Joseph’s Village Wellness Program, started six years ago to help 21 villages in the Karatu district of Tanzania.
Twenty-five percent or more of these villagers get malaria each year, Tolmie said. One way to protect people from the disease is to provide a mosquito barrier, but only a fraction of the villagers have nets, he said.
“We made the decision to cover every bed,” said Polly Ristaino, a team member and infection control specialist at Johns Hopkins Medicine, adding that two to five people often share a bed.
The nets were manufactured at A-Z Textile Mills in Arusha, Tanzania, and cost about $300,000 raised through grants and fundraising, Tolmie said.
The nets, which are designed to be effective for at least five years, are safe for the villagers and recommended by the World Health Organization, said Tony La Porta, mission consultant and former lab director at St. Joseph.
The 16-person team leaves for the 11-day journey on Oct. 25.
This project is one piece of the wellness program, which has brought the villagers tools for reducing respiratory illnesses and increasing clean drinking water.
The team also has trained people to make pit latrines, which are toilets that filter using sand and stone, and brought the villagers brick stoves to cut down on cooking over hot stones inside tents — a culprit for respiratory infections.
“I think the people do recognize all the benefits of these things,” Ristaino said.
