This week, as we approach World Refugee Day (June 20), a crisis continues to unfold in the Central African Republic (CAR). Nearly 800,000 men, women, and children have fled their homes, displaced by dangerous conflict which has cost thousands of lives.
Families are struggling to survive in the forests and in refugee camps on both sides of the border between CAR and its neighbors, Cameroon, and Chad. These families are especially vulnerable to malaria. With the rainy season well underway, stagnant pools of water provide ideal conditions for even more mosquitoes to breed. Without protection from mosquitoes, it is only a matter of time before they are infected with malaria.
The United Nations Foundation’s Nothing But Nets campaign is working hard with our partners, including the UN Refugee Agency and the MENTOR Initiative, to deliver insecticide-treated bed nets to families now living in refugee camps.
Nothing But Nets has a long standing commitment to the people of CAR. Since 2010, we’ve sent bed nets to families who greatly need them. This life-saving work would not be possible without our supporters around the world.
Recently, I was told about Clarisse, a widow raising her two daughters and six sons in Beboura, CAR. During the rainy season, her two youngest sons have been sick with malaria over and over again.
Clarisse explained, “Malaria has always been a great burden in my family because we did not have mosquito nets. We were always sick. I would regularly take them to the hospital.”
Thanks to the generous donations from our supporters, Clarisse and her family now sleep safely under nets. She no longer worries about her children contracting malaria.
Bed nets work. They make a huge difference in the lives of refugees and internally displaced people who would otherwise be vulnerable to malaria. The World Health Organization reports that in the last decade, global efforts to fight malaria have saved more than 3 million lives.
But we’re not done yet. Please join with me this World Refugee Day. Help me send life-saving bed nets to the children of CAR. To learn more about our work, visit www.NothingButNets.net.