Life-saving nets

April 7, 2010

It's the third day of the net distribution in Burundi. We met at the Burundi Red Cross office bright and early and formed teams before setting out to visit the more than 130 distribution sites. My fellow Canadian Red Cross colleagues and I headed towards an area called Cibitoke.

North, near the Rwandan and Congolese borders, this area is ripe with green vegitation and banana trees and surrounded by mountains. In fact, a couple of the sites we visited were high up in the hills displaying a breathtaking view of the countryside.

We went from site to site, some with a couple hundred people waiting in line. Men, women and children were lined up to receive life-saving nets.

As we approached one site, they cheered and reached out to shake our hands. Over and over again I saw smiling mothers holding their tiny babies. It's heartwarming to know that this malaria campaign will protect their babies from malaria - a disease that kills 3,000 children every day in Africa.

Thanks to the generosity of Canadians, the Red Cross is helping to wipe out this sad statistic.