Six million children - and even more adults - die unnecessarily every year from preventable and treatable diseases. These staggering figures are what drew together leaders in medicine, government, business, public policy, and the arts to New York for the Nov. 1-3 TIME Global Health Summit, which is being sponsored by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.
While summit speakers tackled a wide range of topics from poverty to AIDS, some of the best-known Christian leaders there spoke out on the specific issue of malaria.Pastor Rick Warren of Saddleback Church, the Rev. R. Randy Day from the United Methodist Church and the Bishop Joao Somane Machado of the United Methodist Church in Mozambique, addressed what can and must be done to prevent the spread of malaria – a disease that kills a child every 30 seconds, and claims the life of more than a million people each year.
“I don’t often cite a lot of statistics but it is important for us to understand the scope and seriousness of malaria in the world and in Africa in particular, and the numbers are indeed staggering,” said Day, the General Secretary of the UMC’s Board of Global Ministries. He added that nine people will have died in the time he finished his speech.
All three ministers highlighted the need for workers in all fields – public policy, humanitarian, religious advocacy – and people in all nations to work together.
"Poverty and religion and health care are not religious issues," Warren said, adding that he is willing to work with anyone on this issue. "They're not political issues. They're human issues."
"This is not an African issue," said Machado of the disease that kills 4,000 children in Mozambique each year. "It's not only for poor countries. It's global."
Both Warren and Day outlined some of the strategies churches are undertaking to fight malaria.
Warren’s P.E.A.C.E. plan, which addresses what he calls the five major “Goliaths” of the world – spiritual emptiness, egocentric leadership, poverty, pandemic disease and illiteracy – also touches on malaria prevention tactics that begin with mobilising the local church.
It has been shown, he said, that money and medicine are not enough to stop the spread of malaria. "What is lacking is motivation and mobilisation. Those are the things keeping people in poverty and ill health."The United Methodist Community Based Malaria Prevention Project, which Day said will be launched in Sierra Leone in early December, also utilises the “grassroots infrastructure.”
“Often in the NGO circles, we talk about grassroots infrastructure,” said Day. “But those of us who are pastors know that we’re really talking about congregations. We have all these congregations along with the hospitals and clinics, and we have the people.”
The pilot project in Sierra Leone will draw participants from seven countries. The participants, who will come for training at the denomination’s Maternity and Health Center in Kissy, will also serve as points of contact to expand the project across Sub Saharan Africa.
