MEDA Tanzania hosts USAID visitors

MEDA Tanzania recently had the opportunity to give a personal introduction of its work to two visitors from institutional donor USAID.

USAID's mission director Robert Cunnane and development outreach and communications officer Cory Brandt had a ground-level tour June 4 of the Under Five Catch-up Campaign (U5CC) funded by the Government of Tanzania, UNICEF, the World Bank and the President’s Malaria Initiative through USAID.

In U5CC, MEDA is distributing six million free long-lasting insecticide-treated bed nets to children under age five, rapidly increasing net coverage for children under five from the current 47% up to 80% or higher. (more details available)

The visitors saw the project in action and stopped at various points in the value chain, including a local municipal office, a wholesaler's shop and at a retail outlet, where they met with two pregnant women who had just been referred from their prenatal clinic to select their nets as part of Hati Punguzo, an earlier anti-malaria project.

Through Hati Punguzo, MEDA has distributed almost five million ITNs to pregnant women and infants – those most susceptible to malaria – since 2004.

Eighty per cent of malaria deaths each year are among children under five. Malaria is responsible for more than half of all deaths in children under five and for more than one fifth of all deaths among pregnant women.

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