Imagine No Malaria...The Dangers of Early Success

 An insecticide treated mosquito nets protects this family in Cote d'Ivoire from Malaria, a deadly, yet preventable disease.  Photo: Mike DuBose

By Jim Fay, Wesley Church and Foundation of the Illinois Great Rivers Conference.

The early efforts of the Imagine No Malaria campaign and its partners have been dramatic and exciting indeed: malaria deaths reduced by about one third, participation by NBA and television stars, and other success stories few people would have imagined. Indeed, few people could have imagined the clinical laboratory applications the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation managed to put into a cell phone. The value of these cell phone innovations goes far beyond Africa or malaria.

But these early successes open the door to a couple of diametrically opposite dangers.

Danger 1 is short-changing the regular, permanent, everyday United Methodist responsibilities in order to contribute to the exciting, gratifying success stories. Admittedly, it is hard to get terribly excited about paying the monthly church light bill, or the staff medical insurance premiums or the conference apportionments some of us might be a little hazy about. But there is an irony here. The recent dramatic success stories in Africa are possible because The United Methodist Church already had the organizational, charitable, and medical infrastructure on the ground across Africa and around the world to ad-dress the problem.

That is why the United Nations asked The United Methodist Church for help with malaria prevention in the first place.  That is why 100 percent of malaria prevention contributions goes to malaria prevention. We've already paid the everyday administrative costs.

Today’s exciting, dramatic changes in the world were made possible in large part because of the ho-hum, everyday, charitable nuts-and-bolts Methodists have been taking care of for a couple of centuries. (That's why they call us "Methodists.") For example, the most effective anti-malarial drugs (ACTs) cost about 40 or 50 cents per treatment through public or charitable health facilities. They — or worthless counterfeits — costs about ten or twenty times that when purchased through private facilities or pharmacies, which, in the past, was often about the only way to get the drug.

Danger 2 is assuming that, because of some early success stories, the problem has been solved. It is true that in a fairly short time the Imagine No Malaria campaign and its partners have cut the rate of deaths due to malaria in half, from every 30 seconds to every minute. But a death from malaria in Africa every minute is a horrendous and unacceptable statistic.


Those who have already contributed or pledged have every right to feel gratified and exhilarated about the successes their contributions have accomplished. And those who have not contributed still have time to get in on the excitement and exhilaration. Much more remains to be done.

Got a minute? Make a difference. (Or if you already have contributed, continue to make a difference.)

Go to http://www.imaginenomalaria.org/  and click on the "Donate" tab. It only takes a minute.

Christmas Comes Early to Nigerian Village

In rural Nigeria, mothers await monthly medical attention for their children, many of whom are ill with malaria.
Photo: Nyamah Dunbar/UMCOR

By Nyamah Dunbar

Recently, I spent seven days with the Nigeria Rural Health Program, visiting remote villages in the northeastern region of Nigeria. It was enough to humble me to the challenges and to what it means to deliver services “where the road ends.” The health professionals who provide outreach and clinical services under extremely difficult conditions left me inspired by their sacrifice and recharged to continue working towards the targets set by the Imagine No Malaria Campaign.

The Nigeria Rural Health Program operates under the auspices of The United Methodist Church in Nigeria. It is located in Zing, a small, remote village in a large country that is home to nearly 120 million people. As the most populated nation in Africa, with nearly a third of the continent’s people, most of Africa’s malaria burden and the majority of its deaths occur in this West African country.

Nigeria is enormous in size, and any government would find it challenging to deliver services to these most rural of places that lack even basic roads, drinking water, or electricity. People still live in huts built in the mountains and drink from creeks.

In Zing, which is located in Taraba State, the effects of the Sahara desert and global warming can be felt directly through sweltering days, dust storms, and cool nights. During visits with the health outreach team, I watched mothers forge through a scorching day simply to make the one opportunity they would have in a month to meet with a health-care professional regarding their children’s illnesses.

Most of the women crammed into the village hall were pregnant or had young children. The main illness plaguing their children was malaria, or “high fever,” as they commonly refer to the killer disease.

Dickens, the outreach team’s nurse, expertly vaccinated and evaluated each pregnant woman and counseled the young mothers on the importance of taking children to the health center at the onset of fevers.

But there were other issues of concern to the parents, such as the cost of medication. Many rely on subsistence farming which translates into a loss of productivity if the mother has to travel the day’s journey to the health center. She may also have to sleep over with the sick baby—which again translates into more money that the family already lacks.

One mother explained to me with tears of frustration how she had visited another health center during her pregnancy, only to learn that they were out of medicines and supplies to properly treat her.

The story does end with good news. The Rural Health Program was the first to submit an application to the Imagine No Malaria campaign, which officially launched its call for proposals last October. Now it can obtain funds to purchase critical anti-malaria drugs; expand the overcrowded hospital ward, which houses men, women, and children together; and expand community outreach efforts to not simply screen mothers and babies within the rural villages, but train traditional midwives to serve as a link between the community and the health center.

As the villagers and staff, including the outreach nurse Dickens, heard the news, their faces lit up so brightly that you would have thought Christmas had already arrived three weeks early. Sure, the road ahead will be filled with great challenges as the denomination works to eliminate deaths due to malaria, but if I could have bottled up the sunshine on each of those faces and handed it to you as a Christmas present, I would not have hesitated for an instant. Merry Christmas!! May the journey begin!

Nyamah Dunbar is grants manager for UMCOR’s Malaria Initiative.

Save a Life

Patients in the UMCOR-supported Samuteb Hospital in the Democratic Republic of Congo rest under protective mosquito nets.

Barrett’s brother saved a life last week. Driving in a fierce rain storm, he saw a car hydroplane flip over and end up in a water-filled ditch. Stopping his truck, he ran to the turned-over car and found a young woman driver hanging upside-down by her seatbelt with her head under water. She was frantically trying to unclasp the seatbelt. Kicking out the window, he crawled into the car and held her up enough to ease the pressure on the clasp so that he could set her free. No one else stopped to help.

This week I was meeting with an interagency operations task force for Imagine No Malaria. We spent a good bit of time talking about the urgency of this effort. Children and other vulnerable people are dying at a fast rate from the bite of a mosquito. Malaria is a disease only for those who live in the developing world. The question we kept asking ourselves was “Does anybody care?” I think they do. I hope you do.

As I prepare my Christmas sermon I am considering two titles. “Have You Saved a Life Today?” Or maybe, “Save a Life Today!” When I think of Jesus, a child born on Christmas day, I realize again that we are in the life saving business in the narrowest and broadest sense of the term. Will you join me?

To save a life from malaria, contribute to UMCOR Advance 982009, Community Based Malaria Control Program.

By Sam Dixon, Deputy General Secretary, UMCOR