By Michael McLeod, Board Member, Malaria Partners International, Rotary Club of Federal Way 

“…you were always a good man of business, Jacob,” faltered Scrooge,…

“Business!” cried the Ghost, wringing its hands again. “Mankind was my business. The common welfare was my business; charity, mercy, forbearance, and benevolence, were, all, my business…”

                                                               from Charles Dickens’s A Christmas Carol

There are reasons to believe in the almost miraculous. To believe in what compassion and hard work and science, what business know-how, optimism, determination and worldwide pulling together, can achieve. I’ve been fortunate to witness this over the past year with Malaria Partners International (MPI). 

As you’ll read in this article about the world’s first consequential malaria vaccine, it prevents severe malaria 30% of the time. Most of those malaria kills are children under the age of five. The next biggest group is new mothers. The WHO just released its estimate that almost 627,000 people died of malaria last year. On a global scale, this vaccine can have “a massive public health impact.” Indeed. 

And we’ll continue to train and equip thousands of wonderful community health worker volunteers to rapidly diagnose and provide first treatment for malaria, pneumonia, diarrhea and malnutrition in their communities. Together we’ll provide treated mosquito bed nets by the score. Believe in the almost miraculous. We need you. The world needs you.