Today, 25 April 2012, is World Malaria Day, and charitable organisation ARCHIVE (Architecture for Health in Vulnerable Environments) is taking this opportunity to launch a year-long campaign to highlight the ways in which effective architecture and design can reduce the spread of vector-borne diseases.

Architects, designers, engineers, health professionals and the general public are invited to submit ideas to an open competition for housing concepts that will reduce the spread of diseases such as malaria, which is transmitted through female Anopheles mosquitoes.

The project will begin in Yaounde, Cameroon as 90% of the 600,000 deaths caused by malaria in 2010 were recorded in Africa. Over 200 million cases of malaria occurred in 2010 and ARCHIVE hope to reduce this number dramatically with effective design tools. See here for competition details.

Peter Williams, founder and Executive Director of ARCHIVE Global, explains: "Indoors, where the malaria-carrying mosquitoes attack, requires better protection to complement, not replace other effective tools such as bed-nets. We hope that this sheds light on the way in which two key development strategies can be addressed simultaneously and cost-effectively - improved living conditions and improved health outcomes among the most vulnerable."