U.S. Malaria Donations Saved Almost 2M African Children

If the reason for donating the nets is to save lives, then this is no bad thing, right? Those people are putting the nets to the most effective purpose they can find for them. No problem, I say.

EDIT: OK, maybe these nets are suboptimal for fishing. Fine. If the people the nets are going to are in more desperate need of fishing nets than mosquito nets, and you don't want them to use mosquito nets as fishing nets, then you should be sending fishing nets instead of mosquito nets.

There's no honour in telling a hungry fisherman that the mosquito net he is using to catch fish is harmful to the environment. He doesn't give a shit. He either fishes with the net he has, or he starves.

http://blog.givewell.org/2015/02/05/putting-the-problem-of-b...

Another analysis:

"A comprehensive analysis of 14 surveys in several countries with 14,196 households showed that that the overwhelming majority of nets were used for malaria prevention, and only 255 nets were repurposed (which make up less than 1% overall). Furthermore, the majority of the repurposed nets were already considered too torn, indicating they had already served out their useful life for malaria prevention[62]. The authors conclude that national programmes and donor agencies should remain confident in the appropriate use of bednets." https://www.givingwhatwecan.org/post/2015/04/update-against-...