(Brussels) – We are very pleased to announce today, April 25th, 2020, World Malaria Day, the launch of International Dawn Anti-Malaria Alliance (IDAMA). IDAMA has been formed with the specific central objective of fighting Malaria.
Our motivation and focus are based on one simple statistic: every two minutes a child dies of malaria somewhere in the world. These deaths happen mostly in sub-Saharan Africa. We find this situation unacceptable and are determined to make it change.
We, the founders of IDAMA bring together a diverse set of talents and expertise and come from very different places: China, Europe and the United States. We all have the same commitment to contributing to improving world health and have a unified agreement that fighting malaria is a critical objective to achieve this. Every single child’s life that we can save adds towards achieving our goal. We believe we can accomplish much more than that.
Malaria is among one of the largest health issues that the world faces today. Almost 90% of the cases occur in Africa. In 2019 alone, at least 220 million people were infected by malaria. Of these, there were about half a million deaths are reported, an unacceptably large toll on humanity.
We derive our strength from the research carried out by Dr Tu Youyou, a Nobel Laureate, who successfully isolated Artemisinin. This substance and its derivatives can help to block the malaria parasite’s cycle by alkylating and poisoning one or more essential malarial protein.
Artemisinin, the parent compound which acts against Plasmodium spp the causal agent of malaria, is extracted from a plant called Artemisia annua. One of our approaches will be to work with malaria-susceptible countries to cultivate crops of Artemisia annua, extract the helpful artemisinin from these plants, and formulate medicines to fight malaria.
Malaria is a complex disease with an ability to develop resistance to medicines. IDAMA intends to use the entire arsenal of tools available to attack this disease at all of its stages including those inside the mosquito intermediate host, and also by building preventive strategies through the development of suitable vaccination protocols.
We are fully determined and committed to achieving success in this mission, and we welcome everyone who would like to join us in our efforts to decrease the prevalence of this dreaded disease and save lives.
“Only after tasting the hardships of life, can we begin to understand the polar opposites of good and evil in this world. I choose to engage in times of reflection, and times of altruism, while taking the measure of the sky and the vastness of the oceans.
I wish to devote my remaining years in uniting with my kindred spirits to promote charity, dedicating our love and strength to those who live in slavery to the evils of hardship and need. To the extent that I am able, I wish to shelter people from suffering, bar diseases from their doorstep, and envelop them in love. I look forward to seeing you, myself, and newcomers on the way.”
– SHI De Hua
“In as much as you are able, do good in this world. Cultivate merit to the benefit of others. Let us stretch out our hands in loving friendship and raise up the dawn of the sun to illuminate the things of this world. Free the people from pestilence and woe. Equip them instead with happiness and health. Let us unite as one to fight malaria and contribute to the creation of an alliance charity.”
– SHI Yi Ming
“I believe we share a common human trait by engaging in acts of public welfare. It is even better to benefit in a synergistic manner by building a platform for people with the same goals.
My involvement, although modest, still is something that I insist on doing well. Someday, it will become a big thing. My hope is that, along with those like-minded people, day after day, year after year, our vision of public welfare becomes fixed within our subconscious throughout our daily life.
I think that only by rooting the subconsciousness in our minds and hearts, and spreading this concept to others, can we bring more care to the world, allowing more people to see the dawn and embrace the brighter sun of tomorrow.”
– Xia Li Yun
“Over the last decade, I spent a long time reflecting on the sense of my life. I did a lot of things during my life; but I felt something I really miss is engaging myself in humanitarian activities.
Being a veterinary doctor, I have a natural attraction to sciences and medicine. I was living in China when Dr Tu Youyou received her Nobel Prize in 2015 for the discovery of Artemisinin, the parent compound of a new family of susbstances active against malaria. This opened my eyes on this disease. Malaria is a terrible disease killing half a million people every year, and mainly children less than 5 years old. Yet malaria is a well known disease. We know how to treat it nice the 17th Century when quinine was extracted from the bark of cinchona tree in Peru. We also know for a long time the vector of the parasite causing malaria: the female Anopheles mosquito who by biting human beings infects them.
So why is malaria killing so many people then? I believe the main reason is the lack of investment in the treatment and prevention of this disease. And why this? Simply because it affects the poorest populations of the world, mainly in Africa, and these people cannot afford the treatment! As the result there is today more money invested in baldness drugs that in anti-malaria drugs! That’s really terrible!
My objective in the next 20 years or so is to invest my time and experience in changing this situation. Every life we will save will be an inestimable reward for me. I am so glad to have met Mr Shi and Mrs Xia, who share the same views and objectives. And I am convinced we are going to achieve together significant results with the International Dawn Anti-Malaria Association, launched on 25 April 2020, the World Malaria Day, by joining our forces and creating synergies. I am so motivated to engage in this project and I can’ t wait to start working. Let’s defeat malaria together!“
– Jérôme Lepeintre