There’s more than one way to “whack” a mosquito in the effort to fight malaria in the equatorial regions of Africa. An international project tied to the Rotary Club of Aspen that has now garnered support from clubs in Carbondale, Snowmass and Glenwood Springs could be a game changer in that fight.
Carbondale residents and Aspen Rotarians, Dr. Dan Perlman and his wife, Bryna, have been busy working with Rotarians around the world — including Kenyan project leader Alice Atemo — to obtain major grant funding for a program called the Western Alliance of Kenya Against Malaria (or WAKAM as an apropos acronym).
It could lead to the next global disease prevention effort for the Rotary International organization, which is already well-known for its decades-long effort to eradicate polio worldwide.
Dr. Perlman is a retired infectious disease and public health specialist who practiced in the Denver area for 30 years before moving to the Roaring Fork Valley seven years ago.
Dr. Dan Perlman looks at malaria case tracking information with health care workers in western Kenya. Courtesy photo
In 2019, shortly after joining Aspen Rotary and pitching malaria as an international project for the club, Perlman traveled to Zambia to help develop an effort aimed at training more community health workers to deal with malaria in rural areas. Dr. Bob Porter, also with Aspen Rotary, was part of that effort as well.
Malaria, which is spread to humans through the bite of female Anopheles mosquitoes, is responsible for the death of one child every minute in some African nations, Perlman said.
“The program mushroomed during COVID, and we were able to eventually develop a program of scale training thousands of health-care workers,” he said.
That effort was made possible with $6 million in funding from Rotary International, as well as the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and World Vision.
The three-year program was successful in bringing important resources to rural Zambia, including not only health workers who could diagnose and treat malaria, but important prevention tools like mosquito nets, repellants and markers, plus effective medicines. From there, the attention turned to western Kenya, which being a rural area right along the equator is significantly impacted by malaria.
This past March, the Perlmans were part of a fact-finding tour in Kenya, touring the villages and rural health care centers and getting a sense of the needs there. That led to a series of 11 meetings with various Rotarians from around the world in London, where WAKAM became the next malaria project seeking global grant funding.
Bryna Perlman with children in western Kenya. Courtesy photo
The new startup is designed to partner 20 clubs in western Kenya with 20 lead clubs from 20 Rotary districts in North America, for a club-to-club effort to battle malaria.
With Aspen as the lead club in District 5470 (the southern portion of Colorado), the Perlmans have been making the rounds to various local clubs to try to drum up $200,000 in seed money. The goal is to get a new commitment from Rotary International and other global funding partners.
Atemo, who leads the Rotary Malaria Project in Africa, has been on a six-week tour around the United States. She was recently the Perlman’s guest during a visit to the Roaring Fork Valley where she spoke to several local clubs, including the Rotary Club of Carbondale.
In addition to being potentially fatal, malaria can affect communities in western Kenya in other ways, Atemo said. School children who contract malaria can miss weeks of school at a time, and adults who are afflicted with the disease miss work, so there’s a profound socio-economic impact, she added.
In addition to providing more health workers, nets, repellants and medicines, they also hope to fund projects to drain stagnant water and swampy areas around houses where mosquitoes breed, and to build more rural health centers. Atemo said that many people from the remote villages who become sick have to be taken many miles over muddy and rutted roads to get to clinics. That delay can lead to a more deadly progression of the disease, known as cerebral malaria.
Other tools, such as bicycles for health workers to travel more easily between villages, and cell phones, are also crucial to the effort, she said.
Vaccine development is also evolving, Dr. Perlman chimed in. While the polio vaccine has been very effective in nearly eradicating that disease worldwide — with the exception of some remaining cases of wild polio in Afghanistan and Pakistan — malaria is more complicated, he said.
A first-generation malaria vaccine wasn’t terribly effective, Perlman said. But the revolutionary methods in vaccine development that came with the COVID-19 vaccine could result in a new malaria vaccine soon.
“Yes, it’s a difficult disease, but I think we are going to make some big progress in the next decade or two,” he said.
Perlman also plans to present the malaria project at the Rotary District Conference in October, which will be held in Colorado Springs.
Disclosure: John Stroud is a member of the Rotary Club of Carbondale.
West Kenyan mother and her child, who is wearing protective clothing to prevent against mosquito bites. Courtesy photo