The Campaign

Ushered in by a parade of school marching bands, traditional drumming groups and hundreds of volunteers, the National Measles and Malaria Campaign was officially launched last week. For the Canadian Red Cross Malaria Prevention Project Team and their Sierra Leone Red Cross counterparts, the campaign was the culmination of months of work procuring and delivering nearly 900, 000 nets and training and mobilizing over 4,000 volunteers. The result of their hard work; in addition to being vaccinated against measles, receiving a vitamin A supplement and de-worming treatment, all children under five in Sierra Leone were provided with a bed-net that will offer them protection from malaria-bearing mosquitoes, significantly improving their chances of survival in this, the country with the highest infant mortality rate in the world.

It has only been two days since the end of the campaign, but already the relative calm of the Sierra Leone Red Cross office is a sharp contrast to the flurry of the past week’s activity. Following the boisterous day of the launch, nearly a thousand distribution and vaccination sites were set up in hospitals, clinics, Red Cross offices, churches, mosques, community centers, markets and street side stalls in communities and neighborhoods throughout the country.


Hundreds of thousands of mothers brought their children to distribution and vaccination sites throughout the week. Some of them, having walked for hours down dusty rural roads with their children on their backs, waited patiently in line for hours at a time to vaccinate their child and receive a net before making the journey home.

Every effort was made to ensure every child was vaccinated and received a net: Volunteers circulated door to door to inform residents, radio stations played campaign jingles, local theatre groups performed sensitization skits in the streets, notices and posters were put up, and newspaper ran articles. T-shirts worn by volunteers and staff during the week of the campaign that read ‘Use Maskita Net For Fet Malaria’ and featured an image of a child sleeping under a bed-net were seen at every turn throughout the week.

For the Red Cross Malaria Project Team, the week was filled with site visitations from representatives from the Canadian Red Cross, CIDA and the media. Visitors to the campaign included the President of the Canadian Red Cross, Jane McGowan, and its Special Ambassador, David Pratt. They had the opportunity to see first hand the distribution of the nets and to meet with the Red Cross staff and volunteers. Returning to Canada with a broad understanding of the scope and scale of the Canadian Red Cross Malaria Prevention Program, these special guests and representatives’ will be able to give Canadians a first-hand account of the work being done in Africa.

A full team effort and good coordination was required to ensure a balance was struck between the visitor agenda and the broader responsibilities of the team in supporting the Sierra Leone Red Cross with the distribution. Months of planning and coordination paid off when the distribution went off with great success. The real stars of the campaign were the Sierra Leone Red Cross volunteers who tirelessly set up sites every morning and spent each day managing sites, distributing nets, and explaining how to properly use and care for the nets. Together with their Ministry of Health counterparts they worked patiently in the heat and humidity over the cries of children to deliver a critical intervention that offers hope for a better future to thousands of children in a country desperately in need.


I spent the first part of the week checking on the urban distribution sites around Freetown. The calm, patient, and relatively small crowds lined up at hundreds of distribution sites around town were one of the greatest success stories of the campaign. Good planning and good messaging prevented overcrowding by ensuring there were enough sites and that it was clear the campaign would run for a full week.

Later in the week I made a trip inland to Bo, a major town in central Sierra Leone with a noticeably quieter feel than Freetown. Together with Doug Mole - our team Logistics Delegate, Emanuel Tommy - Deputy Secretary General of the Sierra Leone Red Cross, and Ken Porter - Program Analyst with CIDA, we checked on number of distribution sites, both urban and rural. Each site we visited had a slightly different set up but each demonstrated effective vaccination administration and net distribution. At every site we were greeted by grateful mothers, curious children and proud volunteers.

The face of Sierra Leone was apparent throughout the campaign. Its courage - visible in the children who fought back tears after receiving a vaccination, its strength - visible in its mothers who waited patiently in the heat to ensure the health of their children, and its determination - visible in the volunteers who worked tirelessly to deliver hundreds of vaccinations and nets for days on end, all gave reason to believe the future of Sierra Leone will be brighter than its recent past.

As I watched wide eyed child after child leave the distribution points clutching in one hand their mothers, in the other their newly acquired nets, I felt a cautioned sense of hope for Sierra Leone. Even as Mr. Tommy described the chaos and destruction of a conflict that ended only five years ago, it was hard not to be impressed with even the small signs of recovery.

Mr. Tommy himself offers such a sign. He speaks of the future of Sierra Leone with measured optimism – discussing how the Sierra Leone Red Cross can build off this current campaign’s partnership with the Ministry of Health and strengthen its broader health care programming. Acknowledging that malaria is only one problem faced by Sierra Leone, he has confidence that the Sierra Leone Red Cross, like the country itself, has the ability to build a better future but he understands also that it needs the support of organizations like the Canadian Red Cross and countries like Canada.

If, as I believe, all of our actions (and inactions) are unquestionably linked to the fate of humanity, than my hope is that Canadian support of this successful campaign is only one example of a broader commitment to humanitarian issues.