Schoolchildren Battle Malaria and Other Diseases: The first edition of a planned 13 part series entitled
Francis Odupute, Edwin Irabor, Joy Otono, Janine Selendy
language
(Horizon International, Jan. 2, 2015)
“WASH 4 ALL” (Water, Sanitation and Hygiene for All) comic book series is being produced by Horizon International, an NGO based at Yale University, U.S.A., in collaboration with the media service of Beautiful Feet International (MediaBFI), a non-profit organization based in Nigeria. The comics are being created to positively engage youths in the fight against diseases related to WASH. “Boys and girls in developing countries where WASH culture is relatively very poor, the health implications of which takes its toll on the lives and education of these children, are our main audience along with parents, schoolteachers, and community-leaders and health care workers through the world,” said Francis U. Odupute, Founder and President of Bfi and an artist for Horizon International who created and designed this comic.“Schoolchildren Battle Malaria and Other Diseases” draws upon the content of Horizon’s book and its accompanying DVDs, “Water and Sanitation Related Diseases and the Environment: Challenges, Interventions and Preventive Measures,” published by Wiley-Blackwell in collaboration with Horizon International. It was completed with comments and reviews from several of that book’s 59 authors, experts from the fields of public health, medicine, epidemiology, environmental health, climate change, environmental engineering, and population research. The link to a free copy of the comic book is: http://www.solutions-site.org/sites/default/files/WASH%204%20All%201%20090314.pdf “Through the comic book,” says Janine M. H. Selendy, Chairman, President and Publisher of Horizon International, “we employ simple stories with powerful graphics to convey complicated health concerns, devastating health problems destroying childhoods and killing millions of children, and to provide some examples of preventive measures that can be taken by families, schools, and communities.” In the school of Dan and Ann, “somewhere in a remote part of Africa,” their classmates are suffering from the symptoms of and dying from malaria. One of the comic’s side bars states: “Malaria is a dangerous disease caused by a parasite transmitted by mosquitoes, a disease vector, every year, over 600,000 people die from malaria…especially children under 5 and pregnant women in tropical Africa. 3.4 billion people, almost half the world’s population is at risk.”As the WHO says, “Better management of water resources reduces transmission of malaria and other vector-borne diseases.”“Every minute a child dies from malaria,” says Selendy. “We focus on various diseases while building on the knowledge of what can be done to prevent them. An estimated 2.4 to 2.6 billion individuals lack access to any type of improved sanitation facility according to WHO. “According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), half of the developing world, more than 35 % of the world’s population lack access to adequate sanitation. And, poor sanitation and hygiene are inextricably linked to water quality.” “With roughly 884 million people lacking access to an improved water supply, water that is protected from outside contamination, in particular from contamination with fecal matter, 1.2 billion individuals are exposed to water-related illness from their drinking water,” Selendy adds. “The lack of this most fundamental service contributes to an estimated 1.87 million annual deaths due to diarrhea- more than 90 % of which are in children under 5 years of age,” writes Jay Graham, Assistant Professor at the GWU School of Public Health and an author of the book. “…diarrhea remains the second leading cause of death in children under 5 years of age globally, and nearly one in five child deaths, around 1.5 million a year, is due to diarrhea. This equates to the death of one child every 15 seconds….”