Fighting malaria with football: Why sport is a powerful development tool
With another World Cup behind us and a new champion recorded in the history books, football fever seems to be subsiding – or, at least, returning to its typical levels – for most of us.
Advertisement
Whether we call it football, fútbol or soccer, the famous tournament has reminded us over this past month that the sport has an undeniable ability to unite communities and transcend cultures. It also has the incredible power to fight a far more powerful fever caused by a preventable and treatable disease, malaria.
United Against Malaria (UAM) (http://unitedagainstmalaria.org/) — an initiative of the Roll Back Malaria (RBM) Partnership and groups like Malaria No More, the Johns Hopkins University Centre for Communications Programmes, Speak Up Africa and KYNE – is a good example of this.
Founded in the lead-up to the 2010 World Cup in South Africa, UAM leverages the power of football in Africa to share life-saving malaria messages with communities across the continent, all the while engaging footballers and confederations, political leaders and private sector executives to help build momentum and unlock additional resources for malaria control.
African football icons such as Didier Drogba (Cote d’Ivoire), Samuel Eto’o (Cameroun), Gervinho (Cote d’Ivoire) and the Ayew brothers (Ghana) have all lent their influence to the effort and joined forces with UAM. Ghana’s very own Black Stars lifted their voices to the cause, producing a PSA (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yjNwj39vnwQ) around the 2010 World Cup and helping to promote healthy behaviour among their fans.
Staring malaria
Most recently, these stars and others encouraged their countrymen to protect themselves and their families from malaria through mass communications initiatives (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dNiBqyW5Aks) that saw billboards erected in 16 countries and 23,000 radio and TV spots broadcast on 34 pan-African and national channels, reaching an estimated one billion viewers with life-saving messages during the OrangeTM Africa Cup of Nations in January 2013.
And Drogba continued to show his passion on and off the pitch during the World Cup in Brazil with a malaria-related PSA (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2OIqzAwu9Vk&feature=youtu.be) produced by the UN Development Programme (UNDP), in cooperation with RBM.
It is no secret that these regional and global occasions provide an unrivalled marketing opportunity, but it is important to remember that they also provide a platform through which to spark dialogue that can influence decision makers and positively shape health behaviour.
Other Trending Stories
Take, for example, the fact that the recent World Cup saw more than 10 malaria-endemic countries competing in Brazil over the past month, including the host country. Four qualifying teams that travelled to South America for the tournament – Cameroon, Cote d’Ivoire, Ghana and Nigeria – are included among the 20 highest-burdened countries in the world that together accounted for 80 per cent of global deaths in 2012.
Behind each of these teams is a nation of fans tuning in from afar to cheer on their local heroes through the tournament – an audience held captive by the airwaves broadcasting the match through their radio or TV.
With UAM, we have found that these same airwaves provide the perfect tool through which to share life-saving health messages, and our research has shown that it helped to positively influence behaviour related to malaria prevention and treatment.
In Tanzania, for example, approximately 65 per cent of those who watched or listened to a World Cup match in 2010 were exposed to UAM spots, and of those, nearly two-thirds recalled malaria control messages.
The same was true in Ghana, where research indicated that those with high-exposure to UAM messages during the same World Cup were three-times more likely to ensure their family slept under an insecticide net.
Tremendous progress has been made against malaria in recent years, with death rates decreasing by more than 40 per cent globally and almost 50per cent in Africa alone since 2000. Collective efforts have helped avert more than three million malaria-related deaths between 2001 and 2012.
Victory is on the horizon, but the clock is ticking, and continued progress will take all of us working together to help move the ball forward to beat malaria once and for all. Thanks to the commitment of many governments, foundations, researchers, UN agencies and private companies, not to mention the football stars mentioned already, we have a more-than-capable team.
Footballing malaria
The football industry has shown incredible commitment to the fight against malaria from the very top, with FIFA’s President, Sepp Blatter, supporting the UAM campaign and the football’s broader role in health education efforts. This commitment is also true at the regional level, with the Confederation of African Football placing malaria at the top of its corporate priorities and naming UAM as an official social cause of the 2013, 2015 and 2017 AFCON tournaments in South Africa, Morocco and Libya respectively.
The final whistle of the World Cup was blown this past weekend, with Germany grasping the coveted trophy, but our fight against this killer disease continues. Despite tremendous progress that has seen death rates decreasing by more than 40 per cent globally and almost 50 per cent in Africa alone since 2000, almost half of the world’s population is still at risk from getting malaria. Each year, there are nearly 210 million infections estimated around the world, killing nearly 630,000 and perpetuating the vicious cycle of poverty that ravages so many communities.
Now, more than ever, we must work together – across sectors – to find innovative opportunities for collaboration to expand, reach, increase efficiencies and maximise impact. Through UAM, we’ve seen that sport can help bring politics, business and health together in a truly unique way.
The football community has proven the power of sport to aid in efforts to accelerate progress against health targets; I hope others would follow suit by including malaria – or other important health issues – in their corporate social responsibility efforts.
As we move forward, setting our gaze on the next World Cup tournaments in Russia (2018) and Qatar (2022), I encourage us to consider the youth who may also have their sights set on these games but who may, unfortunately, have their football dreams cut short by the preventable bite of a malaria-infected mosquito.
Advertisement
Regardless of our football skills, we all have a role to play in the fight against malaria – every bit of support, whether from the pitch, the bench or the stands, has the potential to change the course of history for generations to come, which I think we can all agree is incredibly exciting.
We have a long match ahead of us, but if we work together, we can come out on top.
The writer is the Roll Back Malaria (RBM) Partnership Representative at the United Nations in New York