By: Alanna Shaikh

More good news from me this week. New research shows that more kids in Africa are sleeping under bednets to protect them from mosquito-borne diseases like malaria and dengue. Here’s the big deal: in 1999, only 1.5% of children at risk slept under a net. By 2008 26.6% of children slept under a net. In Djibouti, Ethiopia, and Sao Tome, more than 80% of all children slept under a net. Considering that malaria caused 900,000 deaths in 2006, these kinds of advances really matter.

To make things even more interesting, the countries who did the best job of distributing bed nets and getting people to use them were also the countries that received the most aid for their malaria programs. That’s not exactly 100% proof that health aid works, but it comes awfully close.

Malaria has a lot in common with the NTDs. After all, it’s a tropical disease, too. It’s just not neglected. It shares territory, climate, and even modes of transmission with various NTDs. And, like malaria, we know how to prevent and cure NTDs. What worked for malaria – effective, targeted aid in quantities big enough to have an impact – will work for neglected tropical diseases, too. This research is a reminder and an inspiration. We really can defeat these diseases, bit by bit.

Are you feeling all happy now? I hope so, because I’m about to get cranky and I would like a susceptible audience. You know what else has been proven to work? Humanitarian aid after disasters. As I mentioned last week, the rapid provision of emergency aid – especially drinking water and sanitary facilities – can prevent the wave of water-borne disease that strikes after a disaster.

Pakistan is not getting that aid. There are three and a half million children at risk for disease if they don’t get help quickly, and there just isn’t enough money coming in to fund that help. I don’t know if everyone is tired after the Haiti disasters, if flooding’s not as exciting as an earthquake, or if the world just hates to help Pakistan. But innocent people are about to die from diseases we could prevent. By making sure they had safe drinking water and a decent place to toilet. This isn’t one of those tricky situations where you don’t know if your donation will do any good.

While Pakistan’s leadership isn’t going to win any prizes for good governance, the subsistence farmers who fled the flood waters don’t have much to do with that. We are already starting to see reports of preventable waterborne diseases in among the displaced. And you’re not donating to the government of Pakistan; money given to emergency relief groups doesn’t go to the Pakistani government.

Now is the time to donate for Pakistan aid. You want to pick an NGO that has a history in Pakistan and a lot of experience in emergency response. I mentioned International Medical Corps last week. World Vision, Mercy Corps, and Oxfam are other good choices.

Once you’ve made your donation, contacted your elected officials, and tell them that you support aid to Pakistan’s flood victims. If you don’t want to do it out of sheer altruism, think of it this way. Fifteen million displaced people who aren’t getting the help they need, in an already fragile nation, are a reservoir for diseases that can and will spread globally.

Alanna Shaikh is an expert in health consulting, writing about global health for UN Dispatch and about international relief and development at Blood & Milk. She also serves as a frequently contributing blogger to ‘End the Neglect.’