UVP - Subsidized Mosquito Nets
According to the World Health Organization (WHO), “Malaria is the leading cause of morbidity and mortality in Uganda and is responsible for up to 40% of outpatient visits, 25% of hospital admissions and 14% of hospital deaths. The burden of malaria is greatest among children under 5 years of age and pregnant women.” The WHO also reports that malaria causes 23% of all deaths in Ugandan children under five, and causes 11% of all general deaths in Uganda (2002 data).

Uganda Village Project is working to prevent malaria in Iganga District, Uganda, through the distribution and promotion of subsidized mosquito nets. This initiative is one part of UVP’s “Healthy Villages” program, which will bring a basic healthcare package to 70 of Iganga’s most under-served villages.

Through the Healthy Villages program, we are distributing mosquito nets to five marginalized villages of Iganga. Over the summer of 2009, volunteer teams lived in each of these villages and ran a series of health programs, including multiple outreaches on malaria. We began selling high quality, UVP-subsidized mosquito nets to the villagers, always explaining in great detail how to best hang them and use them. These nets are insecticide-treated and last for five years, even with washing. They are also incredibly durable (made of polyethylene, as opposed to the government-distributed polyester nets), and may therefore be re-treated after five years for continued use.

Uganda Village Project has also trained one individual in each village to be the ‘Mosquito Net Distributor’. Uganda Village Project supplies these distributors with nets to sell to their community, and gives them one free net for every twenty that they sell, as an incentive. We also conduct follow-up in the villages, visiting the homes of every villager who buys a net, in order to ensure that they are using the net properly, and to monitor the change in malaria infection rates.

We subsidize these nets because we are working in the poorest villages of a poor district in Uganda, one of the poorest countries in East Africa – unsubsidized, they would be unaffordable to villagers. We would lose less money per net if we bought cheaper, polyester, 3-year mosquito nets. However, we feel that it is important to supply villagers with durable nets, as many will end up covering 2 – 4 sleeping children, and must therefore be large and tear-resistant. Similarly, the fact that our nets stay treated for 5 years instead of 3 means villagers will spend less money on re-treating their nets or buying new nets. And so, while subsidizing mosquito nets is one of the biggest costs to our Healthy Villages project, we feel that the cost is worth it, in terms of both effectiveness and sustainability.