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For those who have never had been, Botswana is a breathtakingly beautiful country in southern Africa. It’s home to the awe-inspiring Okavango delta, equally inspiring people – and it’s also my home and the country where I once served as minister of health.
Like many parts of Sub-Saharan Africa, however, Botswana also suffers from one of the world’s oldest and deadliest killers – malaria.
Across Africa, this disease claims the lives of around 600,000 people every year; around three quarters of whom are children under five. As Botswana’s minister of health, I fought this injustice every day and saw first-hand the impacts it can have on children’s lives.
Because the disease doesn’t only claim lives, it steals our children’s dreams.
There are around 282 million cases of the disease every year and the lives of those who fall sick and survive are often changed forever. Malaria No More UK have published a new report exploring these impacts and specifically the consequences of malaria on educational outcomes and job prospects.
Take Saada: a 17-year-old from Tanzania who spoke to Malaria No More UK’s researchers. She has aspirations of becoming a doctor but her education was derailed by malaria.
