An Album That Truly Saves Lives

Save my Soul is a timeless and intimate reflection of the human condition, set amidst extreme poverty, famine, and disease. This album demonstrates the unique healing power that music plays in human life. Save My Soul brilliantly captures vocal and instrumental expressions of hope and optimism that overshadow the bleak conditions in which the 21 tracks were recorded.

This rare album was recorded entirely impromptu while a group of humanitarians distributed anti-malaria mosquito nets in Zambia. As the group approached remote villages, camped in the bush, attended masses, visited hospitals and clinics, and explored cities, the album’s producers recorded the music they heard.

Malaria has killed more people than any other disease, ever. If you are not familiar with the continued widespread threat of malaria, the disease kills 3,000 children every day and more than 1,000,000 children every year. The vast majority are under the age of 5. Malaria infects 500 million people every year. Imagine the economic burden on the healthcare system and the crippling effect on workforces that continually see a rise in incidents of the disease. Malaria actually causes poverty. Yet when you talk in terms of one child dying every thirty seconds, the largest consequence is the loss of opportunity, experience, and most importantly: the future.

Even more troubling, malaria is preventable. Insecticide treated mosquito nets (ITNs) are the most cost effective way to protect oneself from infection.

Nets have a significant record of reducing the incidence of malaria. Once a person receives a bed net, they can use it up to four years. Nets are large enough for several children to sleep under. The insecticide treated mesh netting is hung over beds or places of sleep. The net creates a shield between humans and mosquitoes. Mosquitoes that carry malaria generally strike during the nighttime. Therefore, the use of nets greatly reduces the incidence of malaria (studies show up to a 90% efficacy rate).

Unfortunately, lack of financial resources and logistical constraints make it difficult to distribute mosquito nets to those in need. Long lasting insecticide treated mosquito nets cost only $10. However, an average worker in Sub-Saharan Africa earns less than $1 per day. This is not enough money to provide life-sustaining resources such as food, water, and adequate shelter for a family let alone a mosquito net.

The World Health Organization, UNICEF, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, Nothing But Nets, and hundreds of other groups and governments are involved in combating malaria. They are making large strides educating the world about the disease and helping to prevent it. However, more attention and greater financial resources are still needed immediately.

To understand the extent of the problem, one must consider that the Global Fund has approved 2.8 billion dollars in grants over five years in 85 countries to prevent malaria, the White House has set aside 1.2 billion dollars, and the World Bank has pledged 500 million. These public efforts will help; however, a larger push by the private sector is needed to expand and expedite the effort. With your help we can save young lives now. There is no later.

How Your Nets Will Be Distributed

For every compact disc sold on through this website, we will donate funds to the Rotary Club of Manhattan Beach, Rotary Club of Watts/Willowbrook, or comparable organization capable of matching our funds in order to procure insecticide treated mosquito nets.

If you or your organization is interested in selling this album and/or partnering with us to match our funds, or to receive money to purchase mosquito nets, please contact us.

For example, we have partnered with the Watts/Willowbrook Rotary club, a secular non-profit organization that has been effectively distributing nets in Africa. The group has committed itself to combating malaria in Zambia over the next ten years. They have agreed to match the funds we contribute through the Los Angeles Rotary District and Rotary International grant programs. The group purchases PermaNet® long lasting insecticide treated malaria nets that are proven effective for up to four years.

To follow the progress of your contribution during this campaign, please visit stopthebite.org.

Creation of the Album

The music was recorded while a documentary film crew followed the Los Angeles Watts/Willowbrook Rotary club during its net distributions in Africa. The filmmakers wanted to contribute their resources to help the club’s future efforts in combating malaria. This resulted in creating the music cd: Save My Soul – Music to Prevent Malaria.

The CD showcases the talents of many artists whose lives have been directly affected by malaria. For example, if you listen to the track I Will March To Heaven One Day, performed by the school kids of Chifwema village, you can hear the children singing and clapping after a net distribution! The track reveals the sound of the children actually clapping their hands against the bags that the mosquito nets come in. This also occurred during another net distribution at the Bauleni Street Kids orphanage in Lusaka Zambia. This can be heard while the kids sing on the track Praise the Lord.

On several tracks such as Blessed Is He you hear vibrant African choirs singing with impressive natural acoustics inside places of worship.

The album is named after the amazing vocal track Save My Soul performed by a group of children at the St. Catherine’s school in the compounds of Lusaka. The CD also contains traditional African songs such as We Walk Together, performed by authentic tribal dancers in the Livingstone/Victoria Falls area.

The most intimate songs were recorded in the compound of Old John Laing, by children many of whom attested to having malaria 2 or more times (a stunning statistic because most of the singers were under the age of 10). The Girl – She’s Becoming a Woman was performed by a group of 20 kids who live in some of the worst conditions in the world. Note the optimism, playfulness, and charisma in their voices. Once this group of street kids started to sing and dance, it was difficult toget them to stop performing what became one of the most memorable and realistic recordings on the album. Save My Soul – Music To Prevent Malaria is a genuine portrayal of life and music in Africa. It was recorded digitally on location and is now available on this digitally mastered CD. Most importantly this music will save lives.

Introduction to Malaria

Malaria is a vector-borne infectious disease caused by protozoan parasites. It is widespread in tropical and subtropical regions, including parts of the Americas, Asia, and Africa. Each year, it causes disease in approximately 515 million people and kills between one and three million people, the majority of whom are young children in Sub-Saharan Africa. Malaria is commonly associated with poverty, but is also a cause of poverty and a major hindrance to economic development.

Malaria is one of the most common infectious diseases and an enormous public health problem. The disease is caused by protozoan parasites of the genus Plasmodium. Only four types of the plasmodium parasite can infect humans; the most serious forms of the disease are caused by Plasmodium falciparum and Plasmodium vivax, but other related species (Plasmodium ovale, Plasmodium malariae) can also affect humans. This group of human-pathogenic Plasmodium species is usually referred to as malaria parasites.

Malaria parasites are transmitted by female Anopheles mosquitoes. The parasites multiply within red blood cells, causing symptoms that include symptoms of anemia (light headedness, shortness of breath, tachycardia etc.), as well as other general symptoms such as fever, chills, nausea, flu-like illness, and in severe cases, coma and death. Malaria transmission can be reduced by preventing mosquito bites with mosquito nets and insect repellents, or by mosquito control measures such as spraying insecticides inside houses and draining standing water where mosquitoes lay their eggs.

Although some are under development, no vaccine is currently available for malaria; preventative drugs must be taken continuously to reduce the risk of infection. These prophylactic drug treatments are often too expensive for most people living in endemic areas. Most adults from endemic areas have a degree of long-term recurrent infection and also of partial resistance; the resistance reduces with time and such adults may become susceptible to severe malaria if they have spent a significant amount of time in non-endemic areas. They are strongly recommended to take full precautions if they return to an endemic area. Malaria infections are treated through the use of antimalarial drugs, such as quinine or artemisinin derivatives, although drug resistance is increasingly common.

The History of Malaria

Malaria has infected humans for over 50,000 years, and may have been a human pathogen for the entire history of our species. Indeed, close relatives of the human malaria parasites remain common in chimpanzees, our closest relatives. References to the unique periodic fevers of malaria are found throughout recorded history, beginning in 2700 BC in China. The term malaria originates from Medieval Italian: mala aria — "bad air"; and the disease was formerly called ague or marsh fever due to its association with swamps.

Scientific studies on malaria made their first significant advance in 1880, when a French army doctor working in the military hospital of Constantine Algeria named Charles Louis Alphonse Laveran observed parasites for the first time, inside the red blood cells of people suffering from malaria. He therefore proposed that malaria was caused by this protozoan, the first time protozoa were identified as causing disease. For this and later discoveries, he was awarded the 1907 Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine. The protozoan was called Plasmodium by the Italian scientists Ettore Marchiafava and Angelo Celli. A year later, Carlos Finlay, a Cuban doctor treating patients with yellow fever in Havana, first suggested that mosquitoes were transmitting disease to and from humans. However, it was Britain's Sir Ronald Ross working in India who finally proved in 1898 that malaria is transmitted by mosquitoes. He did this by showing that certain mosquito species transmit malaria to birds and isolating malaria parasites from the salivary glands of mosquitoes that had fed on infected birds. For this work Ross received the 1902 Nobel Prize in Medicine. After resigning from the Indian Medical Service, Ross worked at the newly-established Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine and directed malaria-control efforts in Egypt, Panama, Greece and Mauritius. The findings of Finlay and Ross were later confirmed by a medical board headed by Walter Reed in 1900, and its recommendations implemented by William C. Gorgas in the health measures undertaken during construction of the Panama Canal. This public-health work saved the lives of thousands of workers and helped develop the methods used in future public-health campaigns against this disease.

The first effective treatment for malaria was the bark of cinchona tree, which contains quinine. This tree grows on the slopes of the Andes, mainly in Peru. This natural product was used by the inhabitants of Peru to control malaria, and the Jesuits introduced this practice to Europe during the 1640s where it was rapidly accepted. However, it was not until 1820 that the active ingredient quinine was extracted from the bark, isolated and named by the French chemists Pierre Joseph Pelletier and Joseph Bienaimé Caventou.

In the early twentieth century, before antibiotics, patients with syphilis were intentionally infected with malaria to create a fever, following the work of Julius Wagner-Jauregg. By accurately controlling the fever with quinine, the effects of both syphilis and malaria could be minimized. Although some patients died from malaria, this was preferable than the almost-certain death from syphilis.
Although the blood stage and mosquito stages of the malaria life cycle were identified in the 19th and early 20th centuries, it was not until the 1980s that the latent liver form of the parasite was observed. The discovery of this latent form of the parasite finally explained why people could appear to be cured of malaria but still relapse years after the parasite had disappeared from their bloodstreams.

Distribution and Impact of Malaria

Malaria causes about 400–900 million cases of fever and approximately one to three million deaths annually— this represents at least one death every 30 seconds. The vast majority of cases occur in children under the age of 5 years; pregnant women are also especially vulnerable. Despite efforts to reduce transmission and increase treatment, there has been little change in which areas are at risk of this disease since 1992. Indeed, if the prevalence of malaria stays on its present upwards course, the death rate could double in the next twenty years. Precise statistics are unknown because many cases occur in rural areas where people do not have access to hospitals or the means to afford health care. Consequently, the majority of cases are undocumented.

Although co-infection with HIV and malaria does cause increased mortality, this is less of a problem than with HIV/tuberculosis co-infection, due to the two diseases usually attacking different age-ranges, with malaria being most common in the young and active tuberculosis most common in the old. Although HIV/malaria co-infection produces less severe symptoms than the interaction between HIV and TB, HIV and malaria do contribute to each other's spread. This effect comes from malaria increasing viral load and HIV infection increasing a person's susceptibility to malaria infection.

Malaria is presently endemic in a broad band around the equator, in areas of the Americas, many parts of Asia, and much of Africa; however, it is in sub-Saharan Africa where 85– 90% of malaria fatalities occur. The geographic distribution of malaria within large regions is complex, and malarial and malaria-free areas are often found close to each other. In drier areas, outbreaks of malaria can be predicted with reasonable accuracy by mapping rainfall. Malaria is more common in rural areas than in cities; this is in contrast to dengue fever where urban areas present the greater risk. For example, the cities of the Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia are essentially malaria-free, but the disease is present in many rural regions. By contrast, in Africa malaria is present in both rural and urban areas, though the risk is lower in the larger cities. The global endemic levels of malaria have not been mapped since the 1960s, however, the Welcome Trust, UK, has funded the Malaria Atlas Project to rectify this, providing a more contemporary and robust means with which to assess current and future malaria disease burden.