Senegal strings up, treats nearly 615,000 PMI bednets

Rougiatou Diallo settles down for a nap with her two children, Serigne Fallou (3) and Mame Cor (1) in the district of Guédiawaye near Dakar. Photo by Richard Nyberg, USAID/Senegal

Senegal, like any other country, has a population of diverse peoples: poorer and wealthier; schooled and unschooled; relaxed rural folks and hurried urbanites; toddlers, pregnant women and elderly couples; mainlanders and islanders. And a variety of people means a variety of tastes, of ways to capture attention, and of ways to deliver products that people will use. Whether in the dusty streets of Kolda or the colorful alleys of Saint-Louis, you might hear locals invoke the proverb:  “Bëgg-bëgg yee wuute, moo-tax njaay may jar ca jaba,” which translates as “people’s preferences are different, which is why everything sold in the market finds a buyer.”

That’s why the President’s Malaria Initiative (PMI) is using several different methods of making insecticide-treated bednets available to the Senegalese people. First and foremost, PMI targets people physically most vulnerable to malaria: pregnant women, young children, and people living with HIV/AIDS. To date, PMI in Senegal has delivered (through a vitamin A campaign, a visit from First Lady Laura Bush, boat trips, and AIDS patient networks) 196,872 long-lasting nets into the hands of Senegalese in these three groups, at no charge to them.

Pregnant women and young children took home another 134,413 nets after they chipped in a small co-payment for a net in one of the 24 districts where a voucher system has begun operating with PMI’s help and funds. PMI also teamed up with community organizations to help families re-treat 125,632 older mosquito nets with insecticide, renewing their protective value.

And for those Senegalese who prefer to shop around for their choice of bednet, or the convenience of popping into a pharmacy at any hour and picking up a net at market price, PMI partners have helped introduce and market new net brands to retail outlets, with a resulting 158,060 nets sold retail.

So far, PMI in Senegal has used these various methods to satisfy 614,977 people’s preferences for bednets.

One bubbly beneficiary is 38-year-old Rougiatou Diallo, mother of two, who lives in the Guédiawaye district near Dakar. She received a net when she took her children to participate in a combined micronutrient-bednet campaign in May 2007. She was so pleased about the free net that “came from the Americans” that her family went out to buy a second at the nearby health center. The two nets protect Rougiatou and six children from malaria.  Seven months after receiving the net, she reports that no one in the family has fallen ill with malaria and mosquitoes do not venture into their bedrooms anymore. And if they do, she says, they are found dead on the floor the next morning. With PMI’s flexible intervention in Senegal, myriad mosquitoes find their way into dustbins every day.