PSI’S AMBASSADOR Molly Sims, on the World Malaria Day gives Tonic the lowdown on how to eradicate the very preventable and controllable disease. Across West Africa, lions of mosquito nets are being distributed to further increase to malaria prevention by the end of the year. In the past decade, bed net coverage has increased sharply in 11 African countries.

Sims explains, “It's all about the World Cup. It's using celebrities and soccer players and advocates and politicians — anybody who has a voice to say that malaria can be completely preventable and controllable. You can imagine how many people that will help. A child dies every 30 seconds. So in the length it takes to play a soccer match — 180 people are dead in an hour and a half." Or as she later put it, "three jumbo-jets worth of people die everyday." Horrific, considering these are completely avoidable statistics.

It may be noted that Malaria kills a child in Africa every 30 seconds and nearly one million people each year and around 91% of malaria deaths occur in Africa and of these 85 percent of these are children are under 5 years of age. Half of the World population that is around 3.3 billion people are at risk of malaria worldwide. Sims also added, “$10 will buy a net for a family for five years — $5 for the behavior change, and $5 for the net. You can get an amazing return on your investment because you can end it. If people get treated, they can live. It's a pretty good investment to bet on." We couldn't agree more”.