World Malaria Day

This Thursday, April 25, is World Malaria Day. It's a time when everyone involved in the fight to end preventable deaths from malaria - churches, NGOs, hospitals, research labs, donors, advocates, government leaders, health care professionals, community educators, public health officials, and others - joins together to help raise awareness of malaria and invite others to join us in saving lives. In case this is your first time to the blog, here are the statistics:

• Malaria is a disease transmitted through the bite of a mosquito. 
• Left untreated, its flu-like symptoms (fever, chills, vomiting, headache) lead to convulsions, organ failure and countless unnecessary deaths.
• One in five children in Africa does not reach their 5th birthday because of malaria. 
• Over 655,000 people die each year because of malaria.
• Malaria is preventable, treatable and beatable: To overcome malaria, we must continue to support the most effective prevention methods. We also must improve education about the disease, continue to establish community-based malaria-control programs, conduct communications and revitalize hospitals and clinics to improve treatment across Africa.
• Imagine No Malaria is an expression of the United Methodist Global Health Initiative to raise $75 million to fight malaria on the African continent. 
• Through Imagine No Malaria, 1.2 million insecticide-treated nets have been distributed, impacting 2.4 million lives. A total of 13 health boards have been created with responsibilities in 16 countries and 5,800 health care workers have been trained.

World Malaria Day is a great opportunity to take the first step in joining the people of The United Methodist Church as we Imagine No Malaria, and then help make that vision a reality. Or, if you've already taken some first steps, it's an opportunity to pray and reflect on whether God might be nudging you to go a step further, whether that's through Advocacy on behalf of those suffering from malaria, Raising Awareness among your church or community, Raising Funds alone or with a group of like-minded friends, Engaging the Community to invite others into this extraordinary effort, or volunteering at the local, district, or conference (regional) level to support this ministry behind the scenes. Check out the Resources to Get Involved page for a complete list of ideas on how you can take part.

Our movement begins and is surrounded by prayer: Join Imagine No Malaria as we pray for all who are affected by this preventable and treatable disease.  As people of faith, we will once again through prayer ask God to bless and protect those who suffer with malaria but to also bless and protect those who  are working toward malaria’s elimination as a disease of poverty. Visit ImagineNoMalaria.org each day this week for a daily prayer, and lend your social media network to our Change the World campaign at Thunderclap to help us get the word out to invite prayers for all affected by malaria.

This year, our program staff at the General Board of Church and Society are particularly encouraging Imagine No Malaria supporters to take part in an advocacy movement to let our elected leaders know how important Global Health funding is to us as people of faith. Please consider writing to your Senators and Representatives to ask for continued support of Global Health Assistance for diseases of poverty like malaria. You can send an electronic letter simply by entering your zip code and contact information at the GBCS page for World Malaria Day Advocacy.

(There are two other petitions you can sign onto at UMPower.org: Moms for Moms, and Stand with Us Against AIDS, Tuberculosis, and Malaria.)

If you're able to make a donation to move us toward our goal of ending deaths from malaria in Africa, you can do that here (2nd box down) or here (be sure to check the box near the bottom of the form for your United Methodist church/district/conference affiliation). We most often use $10, the cost of providing an insecticide-treated bed net, as our reference point for what it takes to save a life, but if you're looking for more detail, here are a few other comparisons:

Bishop Elaine helping hang a bed net in Angola

$5.00    Provides medication to treat someone with malaria
$10.00    Purchases one insecticide-treated mosquito net
$20.00    Pays for the cost of food and treatment of anemia in a pregnant women with malaria
$50.00    Buys 25 Rapid Diagnostic Kits for malaria
$100.00    Covers the expenses for an anti-malaria campaign in a local school
$200.00    Trains Traditional Birth Attendants in malaria prevention and treatment.
$500.00    Provides all the expenses for a one day community leader training for 35-40 people on malaria prevention.

And this is a great time for starting a plan to engage your community, whether through a church-sponsored event, a school-based awareness campaign, or another creative approach to inviting others to join you in saving lives. If you want to be trained to volunteer for Imagine No Malaria, be sure to contact me, kerry (at) rmcumc.com, so I can include you in plans for volunteer trainings this summer.

Whatever action you take for World Malaria Day, please let us know about it through Facebook (https://www.facebook.com/RockyMountainConferenceUMC), Twitter (https://twitter.com/RMCbuzz), or by email (kerry [at] rmcumc.com). Tell us the story of what this means to you, how many lives you plan to save, how you are inviting others to make a difference through this extraordinary, life-saving ministry, so we can continue to build the movement. Thank you for all you are doing, and remember, it is God who is at work in you and through you to bring more abundant life to our sisters and brothers around the world!