Bicycles have become a critical tool in the effort to bring lifesaving health care to the remote villages of east-central Africa, including as part of a campaign by a dedicated Rotary International action group to eliminate malaria deaths.

Three years ago, Rotary clubs around the world, including those in the Roaring Fork Valley, banded together to address malaria prevention and treatment in the region.

Leading the charge locally are Dr. Dan Perlman and his wife, Bryna, of Carbondale, who were successful in securing a nearly $300,000 global grant through the Rotary Club of Aspen to help get things started.

Clubs across Colorado, including those in Glenwood Springs and Carbondale, joined the effort. The money went to establish the Western Alliance of Kenya Against Malaria, or WAKAM, to train and supply more than 200,000 community health workers to combat malaria.

Since then, the effort has grown to include 11 African countries through the Rotarians Against Malaria-Global Action Group, or RAM-Global.

Malaria is an infectious disease spread by mosquitoes and kills roughly 600,000 people each year, mostly children under 5, Dan Perlman explained.

“No child should succumb to a disease that’s easily preventable and treatable,” he said.

But that means getting the necessary supplies, such as insecticide-treated mosquito netting, vaccines and medicine out into the bush villages, where a majority of the deaths occur.

The challenge is that many of those villages are virtually unreachable by motor vehicle. So bicycles have been employed to aid in the delivery of supplies.

“We know that a bike can extend a community health worker’s reach to more people and more villages by about four or fivefold,” Perlman said.

The rugged, three-speed Buffalo bikes that they use cost about $220 each, and more are needed.

To help in that effort, the Rotary Club of Carbondale, of which the Perlmans are members, is organizing a “Bike for Bikes” bike-a-thon fundraiser along the lower Rio Grande Trail on Oct. 11.

“It’s a fun ride, not a race,” said club member and avid cyclist Tim Whitsitt. “We’re encouraging families and individuals to get out and enjoy the fall scenery and get a little bit of education about what we’re doing. We want people to understand what a devastating disease this is worldwide, and to get them involved in dealing with it.”

Riders can register individually for $50, or form teams of four to raise additional money through pledges.

Whitsitt joined the Perlmans last year on one of their regular trips to Africa to engage in some hands-on service work.

“When somebody is infected with malaria, it requires a very rapid response to provide the necessary medical treatment and care so that they are not taken within the first 48 hours by a disease that comes on very quickly and is very devastating,” he said. “We have what we need to deal with it, but it’s about getting it out to the people who need it, which is a massive logistics problem.”

Dan Perlman chairs the RAM-Global board, and Bryna is the fundraising co-chair. They returned to Africa in late August and early September this year for what they called a “cadre visit” to inspect some of the local project sites and gauge progress.

“When we first initiated this three years ago, we had lots of very timid workers who had never drawn blood before, and some who’d never been on a bicycle,” Bryna Perlman said. “So lots of training was needed to prepare them for this responsibility.”

Villagers were also very hesitant to place trust in the community health workers who were sent out into the field. But today, they are often addressed as daktari, or doctor in Swahili, she said.

Many of those workers are women, she noted.

“As a woman watching these people suddenly become elevated, and the respect that the villagers have for them and the care that they are bringing to their babies, is inspiring,” she said. “They’re no longer afraid, and they’re no longer going to a witch doctor to get help for their children.”

During the visit, Dan Perlman also became the first Rotarian to administer a vaccine to a child at an orphanage in Uganda. The orphanage was a recipient of a $2,500 small grant to obtain bed nets, testing kits and provide vaccines.

That child became known as “Baby RAM Sydney.” She had been found abandoned as a baby on the side of the road, was malnourished and had contracted malaria.

Vaccines, administered to children in four doses, are crucial on the prevention front, Dan Perlman said.

Just as Rotary has been instrumental in administering the lifesaving polio vaccine around the world, malaria is becoming the next big global effort for the service organization, he said.

“Smallpox has been eradicated by vaccine, polio is almost eradicated, and so it’s time to have the infrastructure in place to build toward a malaria eradication program. We have a great start,” he said.