David Beckham continues to be an ambassador of the World Health Organization (WHO) and to fight with the deadliest ever disease, malaria. This week, the British athlete has launched a global video appeal to end malaria in which he appeared to be speaking nine languages including exotic Swahili and the Nigerian language Yoruba, but aided by artificial intelligence, he confessed.
The British football star David Beckham and the WHO have joined their efforts in fighting malaria. On Tuesday, the athlete’s 55-second video urged to be extremely attentive because malaria kills about 435,000 people a year, largely in Africa. The most dangerous thing is children aged under five making up 61 percent of deaths from malaria.
David calls on people to add their voices to an online petition to get the attention of world leaders ahead of a key conference in October. The charity behind the campaign, Malaria No More UK, said the filmmakers used video synthesis technology to make it look like the retired athlete was speaking in eight other languages.
“Malaria isn’t just any disease. It’s the deadliest disease there’s ever been,” Beckham said in English before switching to Spanish, Arabic, French, Hindi, Mandarin, Swahili, Kinyarwanda, which is spoken in Rwanda, and Yoruba.
UNICEF praises Mr Beckham for his efforts in fighting malaria
WHO report shows that malaria kills about 435,000 people a year, and Africa is the most vulnerable region. In 2017, there were 219 million cases of malaria, up from 217 million in 2016, so, WHO warned the global response had stalled despite a United Nations’ global goal to end the disease by 2030.
David Beckham who retired from the game in 2013, has supported charity organization Malaria No More UK for over a decade and is a founding member of the group’s leadership council as well as an ambassador for the UN children’s agency UNICEF.
He called for action before the Global Fund conference in Paris in October that will aim to raise at least $14 billion from governments, companies and philanthropists to fight malaria, AIDS, and tuberculosis.
