Tuesday, July 25, 2006

Math: Bednets

In response to a question I sent the Swim for Malaria folks:

Hi -

Yes, 281 nets will have 562 children sleeping under them, and more dramatically when you look at the impact that has on the number of children that will now not die (who would otherwise have done had they not been protected)…it is not that all 562 children would otherwise have died but a proportion of them…and when you look at the what studies show us about ‘how many nets end up saving how many lives’, the answer is every 20 nets installed reduces the death toll by 1. Hence, 14 lives saved per 281 nets.

This all comes from a base statistic that is widely accepted that 1 life is saved every 160 bednet years. Given LLINs last for 4 years and 2 children sleep under each net, 20 nets x 4 x 2 = 160, hence 1 life per 20 LLINs installed.

Hope that helps.

There is more here: http://www.worldswimformalaria.com/en/OneChild.aspx

Best regards – and thanks for your support.

Rob

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