Half the world’s population is at risk of malaria (3 Days to Go) : 8 MDG.
Today with three days to go, the focus is on Millennium Development Goal 6: Combat HIV/AIDS, Malaria, Disease. The United Nations has set three targets for this Millennium Development Goal:
- Halt and begin to reverse, by 2015, the spread of HIV/AIDS
- Achieve, by 2010, universal access to treatment for HIV/AIDS for all those who need it
- Halt and begin to reverse, by 2015, the incidence of malaria and other major diseases
One of the Outcomes for the 10 City Bridge Run is to invest $24,000 in anti-malaria technology through the distribution of 10,000 mosquito nets. The ability to create leverage in order to achieve this will only come with the participation of sponsorship. Only with sponsorship is it possible to achieve the 10 City Bridge Run.
Remarks from the UN are sobering and need no further explanation. This is a serious and tragic situation through the prevalence of these infectious diseases.
- Every day over 7,400 people are infected with HIV and 5,500 die from AIDS- related illnesses. HIV remains the leading cause of death among reproductive-age women worldwide.
- An estimated 33.4 million people were living with HIV in 2008, two thirds of them in sub-Saharan Africa.
- Access to HIV treatment in low- and middle-income countries increased ten-fold over a span of just five years.
- Malaria kills a child in the world every 45 seconds. Close to 90 per cent of malaria deaths occur in Africa, where it accounts for a fifth of childhood mortality.
- 1.8 million people died from tuberculosis in 2008, about 500,000 of whom were HIV-positive.
Building Bridges 
October 11, 2010 at 11:47 pm
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October 12, 2010 at 8:58 am
For those who might recall my response to what impossible thing we were going to tackle today (at a recent breakfast) when I nominated a colleague’s efforts to reach Everest Base Camp, I’m pleased to report that he reached it – good work for any 47 year-old father of two, but simply amazing for a man who lost his sight in an accident at age seven. Anyone who has trekked in the Himalayas knows the effort involved – unimaginable to do it blind. But he imagined it, and did it.
While I was trekking the Routeburn, in New Zealand, I met an 82 year-old woman who had trekked thousands of kilometres, and she didn’t start until she retired at 60. When I asked her secret, she said ‘You just put one foot in front of the other’. Indeed. In this fast-forward, instant-gratification society we can lose sight of the power of putting one foot in front of the other and the imagination to challenge yourself to do things which seem impossible because they will require huge amounts of effort and trust and assistance. We all need to get over ourselves and our fears of failure and just attempt more – sometimes we succeed. And if we don’t, so what, in the scheme of things we are not important and most people are too focussed on their own inadequacies to take much notice of their neighbour’s.
October 12, 2010 at 2:26 pm
Awesome achievement! Please relay much vote of kudos! There is a quote which I love which maybe is appropriate in this case: “The only limits are those of vision”. In this case, vision of the mind of what can be achieved. That news has made my day!