Voices of the Youth

  Mr. Rotimi Olawale, Nigeria

Rotimi Olawale, 23, male youth delegate representing Nigeria at the UN Global Youth Leadership Summit, discusses the malaria situation in his country

Rotimi Olawale heads a non-profit youth organization called The Intellectual Group in Nigeria. Over the past three years he has been involved in leading youth advocacy efforts mainly around the Millennium Development Goals. He has also travelled extensively across Nigeria, where he delivers lectures and presentations and offers training for other young people. He is currently involved with the Global Youth Coalition on HIV/AIDS, an alliance of over 2,000 youth leaders and adult allies in HIV/AIDS.

I come from the town of Ogbomoso, in the south western part of the Nigeria, Oyo State. At the Global Youth Leadership Summit I look forward to the unique opportunity to meet with people from all over the world to discuss important issues such as sustainable development, access to education and innovative solutions to public health crises. Malaria is a serious problem for Nigerians, particularly for young people, which is why youth activism on this issue will mean a lot. For children that survive episodes of malaria, there are still a lot of negative consequences from the disease. Academic growth and education are negatively impacted because a lot of young people are absent for weeks at a time because of malaria. In fact, I did an informal survey of one junior secondary school and malaria was shown to be the number one reason for absenteeism. We need improved drugs and better access to these drugs. Simple malaria can be cured in 2-3 days, but a lot of young people cannot get these drugs and this means a long bout of illness that can keep them out of school for 2-3 weeks at a time.

In terms of malaria control, my NGO presently promotes immediate environmental solutions that people can carry out in their communities without additional resources. For instance, assisting people with eliminating places where mosquitoes breed by cleaning up drains and removing old tyres. We would like to be doing much more, such as distributing nets and carrying out malaria education campaigns, if resources became available.

Nigeria is trying to provide bed nets to vulnerable groups but these nets are not reaching the communities I work with. Nets are seen as a luxury. I purchased a net for my mother recently and it was 600 naira (about $4-5 USD). Most people are treating malaria with chloroquine, even though it is far less effective than ACTs, because chloroquine is only 100 naira while ACTs can be upwards of 300 naira.

IEC (Information, Education and Communication) tools for malaria are not widely available. We need more advocacy on malaria in Nigeria. The problem is more real to us than HIV/AIDS but the money, information and prevention/treatment tools do not always follow.

I would like to emphasis that for small and medium organizations, the need to access sources of funding is critical. I envision a roll back malaria fund so that community-based organizations such as the Intellectual Group could expand and improve upon our malaria advocacy. People are very receptive to the idea of malaria advocacy and interested in ways to reduce the incidence of the disease for themselves and their families. Oftentimes global messages are not reaching them and local organization are best placed to carry those messages forward. These are the types of ideas and solutions that I will discuss with my counterparts in New York at the Summit.