The geopolitical challenge of malaria

Today IB Glopo Year 1 embarks on our final case study in Global Public Health; that of malaria. One half of the world's population, over 3 billion people, are at risk of contracting malaria; well over 200 million individuals contracted the disease in 2010, with over 600,000 deaths (WHO). And yet, the challenge of treating the disease is not simply one of medicine; its politics, financing, development, geography, culture, and more. As a result, the study of malaria as a geopolitical challenge is an appropriate capstone to our course of study.

We'll begin by watching Bill Gates' keynote on the subject. This will be followed by teams of students navigating a webquest on malaria. Please note that you'll need a hard copy of this reporting sheet to document your data and as a frame of reference for further analysis. We'll then play Malaria in Wazuzu as a vehicle to understand the complexities of treating malaria in a developing country. Finally, we'll have the chance to see some solutions to malaria in action. Of course, we'll debrief regularly throughout the process; this means that we should plan on at least a a week or so to work through all of this material. The complete plan for this lesson can be found here; be sure that you add this to your files as well.