Nuggets, Rapids To Help Anti-Malaria Campaign

from CBS 4 Denver

By Colleen Slevin, AP Writer

DENVER (AP) ― The Denver Nuggets and Colorado Rapids have joined the "Nothing But Nets" campaign to help buy $10 malaria nets to save the lives of African children.

Flanked by students wearing "Buzzkill" T-shirts outside the state Capitol on Wednesday, officials of both teams said they would hold sports clinics for students this week and also teach them about malaria and show them how to raise money to fight it.

Nothing But Nets began nearly a year ago when Sports Illustrated writer Rick Reilly, who grew up in Colorado, urged anyone who had ever enjoyed playing a sport that involved a net to contribute $10 to buy an insecticide-coated sleeping net.

Since then, the United Nations Foundation has worked with sports teams, churches and other groups in seven cities including Miami, Houston and Chicago to coordinate the effort and promote donations. New York will be added in April.

United Nations Foundation president Tim Wirth said $1.5 million poured in within a week of Reilly's column last May, and $18 million has been raised so far, enough to buy 700,000 nets.

"This is something that people can actually see makes a difference," said Wirth, a U.S. senator from Colorado from 1987 to 1993.

He said a total of 300 million nets are needed, enough to fill 18,000 shipping containers.

Wirth picked up enough money for two more nets -- along with an official proclamation announcing Nothing But Nets Week -- from Gov. Bill Ritter on Wednesday.

Ritter said he saw the danger malaria posed in remote rural villages while serving as a missionary in Zambia with his family in the 1980s. He said his wife and one of his sons came down with the disease.

"It's $10 for each person in my family who has had malaria," Ritter said, handing over a folded $20 bill.

Rapids President Jeff Plush and Nuggets community ambassador Mark Randall announced their teams were joining the campaign.