Blair urges fight against malaria
2010-02-21 09:39
Abuja - Former British prime minister Tony Blair on Saturday called for concerted efforts to combat malaria, which accounts for a quarter of the one million malaria deaths annually in Africa.
"Malaria has no barrier and does not discriminate. When we think of malaria we think particularly of children and women, and how to prevent it becomes particularly imperative," Blair said at a training workshop of Christian and Muslim faith leaders on ways to combat malaria.
Some 75 million Nigerians, or half of the population, get infected with malaria at least once a year while children under the age of five (around 24m) suffer up to four bouts each year.
Bed nets
The workshop - held in Nigeria's administrative capital Abuja focused - on the use of bed nets to help prevent contracting malaria which is a mosquito-borne disease.
The pilot plan looks to train 300 000 Muslim and Christian faith leaders in a bid to support the government's anti-malaria scheme using an "innovative interfaith model".
The Nigerian government plans to roll out 62m bed nets in a country where nearly 300 000 people succumb to malaria each year.
Around 97% of the 150m Nigerians are at risk of infection, says Roll Back Malaria, a global initiative aiming to eradicate the disease.
Blair, who was British prime minister from 1997 to 2007, lauded Africa's largest Muslim and Christian alliance, the Nigerian Inter-Faith Action Association (NIFAA), for its role in combating malaria.
Inter-faith action
"This model of inter-faith action can be readily adopted to join the state and public sector in other developing countries if government and funders are willing to provide external support to make this a reality," he said.
"That is at the heart of my own faith foundation. When faith communities collaborate and work together for justice and human development, there is a pay-off. That is, things get done and then respect and understanding between them grows," he said.
Nigeria's supreme Islamic affairs leader Muhammed Sa'ad Abubakar III, the Sultan of Sokoto, said the two faiths had come together "to fight a common cause is of importance to us, because we believe that the mosquito does not know religion".
The Roman Catholic Archbishop of Abuja and head of the Christian Association of Nigeria, John Onaiyekan, said the project was an "extraordinary opportunity to turn the world's positive attention to this major health" problem.
Blair, who arrived in Nigeria on Friday at the start of an African tour that will also take him to Liberia and Sierra Leone, is to attend an award ceremony in Abuja on Sunday organised by the privately-owned newspaper This Day.