This post is about malaria and is also a request for help with what I do in Dadamac.
Why malaria?
Earlier this evening I phoned Graham Knight for a catch-up phone call. He was out, so I did "an alternative catchup", re-reading a couple of his recent BioDesign newsletters. That's how malaria and mosquito control came to my mind.
Artenisia annua
Graham has been in discussion with various people about the practicalities of artenisia annua.
(Help needed note - at this point I'd like to have put a summary about artenisia annua and malaria, and Graham's work, plus a link to Graham's newsletter and how to subscribe.)
Help needed ref Mozzi-Mort
Next my mind went to an email I received some time ago which is still awaiting a reply, and is related to malaria.
(Help needed note - there are other unwritten emails I need help with.)
The email referred to reading Dadamac blogs that had mentioned a product called Mozzi-Mort. The email was a request for more information.
(Help needed note - the best I can do for now is send an email with a link to this blog).
I had forgotten about Mozzi-Mort, but it did look like a very interesting product and at one time we were exploring the possibility of being involved in field trials. It would be good to get, and share, an update.
(Help needed note. I know where we could dig down to find out more, but the first direction I went in my search this evening ended up at a broken link and I don't have time to look further just now. Dadamac used to be in contact with the people involved in developing Mozzi-Mort. We could try to find out what has happened.)
Other malaria related thoughts
Other malaria related thoughts came to mind.
- What of the Bill and Melinda Gates malaria eradication work?
- What are they doing?
- Is it relevant to any of the people / places / projects in the Dadamac community?
(Help needed note - In Dadamac I'm always wanting to reduce the gap between big top-down projects and local ones that I know. However, it takes time to see if there is any relevance and to see if there are opportunities to connect them together in any way. It's something I've almost completely stopped doing now, but it would be good to keep looking to see how things are changing and what is opening up.)
- What of the permaculture approach to mosquito control we learned about (with Marcus Simmons and members of the Fantsuam Foundation team visiting where this was done in practice in Benin)?
(Help needed note - It would be good to point ot more information on that.)
- Maybe malaria and mosquito control is a topic we should focus on at one of our monthly "First Thursday" open online meetings
- If there was enough interest we might start a collaborative learning group.
(Help needed note. We discuss good stuff at First Thursdays, and often exchange useful information. It's all done through typed chat so there are archives, but there is no-one to harvest the information and share it beyond those involved in the discussions.. I'd love us to blog the unfolding stories and shared knowledge from First Thursdays, in a similar way to the ways we've captured and shared Fantsuam Foundation's information through weekly blogs on Dadamac.net.
- I'm longing to bring together the collaborative learning "threads" in Dadamac with the learning related work I'm starting to do in GlobalNet21
(Help needed note - I need more help with current work before I can give much attention to new initiatives, and then I may want more help with the new stuff as well. I'd better not get started on what all that could be)
- The permaculture approach to mosquito control was tied in with water sytem management, affecting where mosquitoes were breeding, and tied in with fish farming and the fish eating the larvae.
- We have a number of fish farmers in the Dadamac Community - I wonder if it's of any relevance to them.
(Help needed note. We use Drupal as the platform for Dadamac.net, so there are all kinds of things we could usefully do to affect how information generated by the Dadamac Community flows through the Dadamac site and connects up - but I don't have the helpers to make the best use of that potential. I also need help to make better use of social media to raise our visibility.)
If anyone has relevant information, or if any volunteers would like to join me in the Dadamac work I'm doing, please contact me
(Final help needed note. I'd love to be able to offer some paid work in Dadamac but because I've never been paid I need advice and help if I'm to shift Dadamac from its current non-payment approach.)
Please help me to find help by sharing this with people in your network.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 3.0 Unported License.