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To help reduce the millions of deaths related to malaria, BASF recently partnered with the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) in a program called NetMark. The aim of the NetMark program is to establish commercially viable markets for insecticide-treated nets (ITNs) in African countries, where malaria poses the greatest worldwide threat. ITNs reduce deaths caused by malaria by up to 45 percent. This is a significant impact on a disease that kills about 3,000 people each day, mostly children.
ITNs are created when mosquito netting is dipped in FENDONA® insecticide
and then allowed to dry. Nets treated with FENDONA kill or repel mosquitoes
that carry the malaria disease before they can bite sleeping
humans. BASF also markets "sachets" of FENDONA to re-treat nets provided
by BASF textile partners.
By October 2004, NetMark expects that more than 30 million children and pregnant women will have benefited from this effort, resulting in more than 60,000 lives saved. BASF personnel in South Africa and Zambia have done a lot to help with this program. "They were instrumental in creating the NetMark partnership," said John H. Thomas, BASF's Global Marketing Manager for Public Health Products.
NetMark Plus is an eight-year (September 1999 through September 2007), $65.4-million project designed to reduce the impact of malaria in sub-Saharan Africa. It is funded by USAID and implemented by the Academy for Educational Development (AED). The program goal is to reduce the impact of malaria through the increased use and sustainable supply of ITNs and insecticide treatment kits for nets. This is accomplished through partnership and joint investment with a wide range of international and local commercial partners.
BASF is one of the NetMark commercial partners in this USAID program to Roll Back Malaria. The three components of Roll Back Malaria are commercial expansion; subsidized, time-limited interventions; and sustained equity provision interventions.
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