Simon Estes helps to fight malaria in Africa

DES MOINES (AP) ? Iowa-born opera singer Simon Estes has spent his career on the world?s stages and now is lending his voice to help end child deaths caused by malaria in Africa.

Centerville native Estes wants every student in Iowa from kindergarten to 12th grade to sell at least three copies of his latest CD, ?Save the Children, Save Their Lives? and he?ll donate $4 from each $15 purchase to the students? schools and another $5 to the nonprofit Nothing But Nets campaign, which buys mosquito nets and sends them to the poorest areas of Africa.

He wants to buy a million mosquito nets, he told The Des Moines Register for a story published Sunday.

Estes ? who has appeared with 115 orchestras, performed 102 opera roles in 84 opera houses on every continent except Antarctica ? said he learned in 2010 from the World Health Organization that malaria kills a child every 60 seconds in sub-Saharan Africa. It?s a fact he hasn?t forgotten.

In the poorest parts of Africa, window screens are rare, leaving those sleeping vulnerable to the bites of mosquitoes carrying malaria. The nets Estes will buy are treated with insecticide to ward off the insects which typically bite at night when people are sleeping.

Globally, about 600,000 people die from the disease each year, the World Health Organization says. In areas with high coverage rates, bed nets can reduce malaria transmissions by as much as 90 percent.

Estes comes to the fight against malaria from his own humble beginnings.

His grandfather was born into slavery, sold in Virginia at age 5 for $500 and sent to Missouri where he grew up working on a farm and later on a patch of land given to him by the owners. Estes? father eventually moved to Centerville to mine coal.

Estes, born in 1938, was recognized as an extraordinary singer as a child but not encouraged to pursue opera until University of Iowa professor Charles Kellis encouraged him. Kellis helped him earn a scholarship at Juilliard School in New York.

?I?ve sung in every major opera house. I?ve sung for kings and queens and the Nobel Prize Committee. I?ve sung many times for Nelson Mandela, Archbishop Desmond Tutu, two popes at the Vatican. ... I?ve sung with Whitney Houston and Johnny Cash, John Denver, Ray Charles. I can write down a list,? he said.

He said all that was preparation for fighting malaria.

?I?ve lived three-quarters of a century already,? he said, ?and I find it interesting that maybe this is one of the biggest things that God wanted me to do.?