Church to help eradicate malaria in Sierra Leone
Katherine Commale (center) visits with Elizabeth McKee Gore (left) and
the Rev. Larry Hollon during a meeting of global religious leaders,
government policy makers, and world health executives in Washington. A
UMNS photo by Melissa Lauber.
By Melissa Lauber*
April 20, 2009 | WASHINGTON (UMNS)
United Methodist leaders pledged to work with the
international community to end all deaths from malaria by 2015, an
ambitious effort that includes blanketing Sierra Leone with bed netting.
United Methodists joined hands April 24 with close to 400
other U.S. and global religious leaders, government policy makers, and
world health executives for the One World Against Malaria Summit
presented by the UN Secretary General’s Special Envoy for Malaria and
the Center for Interfaith Action on Global Poverty.
The summit, held on the eve of World Malaria Day, launched a
campaign to have faith-based institutions work in partnership with
governments and private groups to increase the distribution and use of
mosquito nets and anti-malarial treatments throughout sub-Saharan
Africa.
Bishop Gregory Palmer, president of the United Methodist
Council of Bishops, announced the denomination is participating in a
nationwide nets distribution in Sierra Leone.
“As part of our commitment to raise $75 million to combat
malaria through the United Nations Malaria Partnership, the people of
The United Methodist Church will seek to help cover the entire
vulnerable population of Sierra Leone with bed nets,” Palmer said.
Wiping out disease and bringing healing to a continent “is
deeply rooted in our DNA,” Palmer said. “This is where we have been
asked by God to be.”
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Katherine Commale
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Each day, 3,000 people die of malaria, Susan Rice, the U.S. ambassador
to the United Nations, said in her keynote address. Last year,
approximately 247 million people contracted the disease and close to a
million died from it.
“It is time to band together to bring another unnecessary
plague to its necessary end,” Rice said. “For about half the world’s
population, malaria is still one of the greatest threats to public
health – a disease that plunges families into poverty, rattles already
shaky public health systems, and steals Africa’s children away from
her.”
It is the death of these children that most moves Bishop
Thomas Bickerton of the Western Pennsylvania Conference, executive
director of the United Methodist Global Heath Initiative.
Close to 75 percent of the 3,000 people who die each day are under the
age of 5, the bishop said.
To remind him of “the bottom line,” Bickerton keeps a
photograph of a girl from Angola, which he looks at each morning when
he awakens. “She is my focal point,” he said.
Since 2006, the bishop has been leading the denomination in a
partnership with the United Nations Foundation and others to deliver
insecticide-treated nets to Africa. Through the Nothing But Nets
campaign, individuals can buy a net for a child in Africa for just $10.
To date, more than 2.5 million nets have been purchased.
“I have hope,” Bickerton said. “By 2010 we will blanket the continent with mosquito nets.”
Elizabeth McKee Gore, the executive director of global
alliances for the United Nations Foundation, said partnerships are
essential. McKee Gore, who is a member of Foundry UMC in Washington,
D.C., also celebrated the power of the people in the pews and the
contributions of ‘everyday United Methodists’ who are working to end
malaria.
“Look at Katherine Commale, she’s my hero,” said Gore.
Commale, who spoke at the summit, is an 8-year old United
Methodist from Pennsylvania who has raised close to $100,000 for
Nothing But Nets.
The key, said Commale, who has been raising this money since she was 5, is patience. “Just keep trying,” she said.
For more information on efforts to eradicate malaria, visit www.umc.org/site/c.lwL4KnN1LtH/b.4407745/k.5B59/Global_Health_Initiative.htm, www.nothingbutnets.org, or www.cifa.org.
* Lauber is the editor of UMConnection, the newspaper of the Baltimore-Washington Conference.
News media contact: David Briggs, Nashville, Tenn., (615) 742-5472 or newsdesk@umcom.org.
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