Imagine No Malaria

Malaria—recognizable by early symptoms of fever, vomiting, and headache—is transmitted by the Anopheles mosquito, and can result in anemia, coma, and death if left untreated. Although malaria, a disease of poverty, is preventable, every year it kills 700,000 people, mostly children and pregnant women in sub-Saharan Africa. United Methodists are part of a worldwide effort to eradicate this disease by the year 2015.

For more information on the Imagine No Malaria campaign, visit the Imagine No Malaria website. To apply for a Malaria Control Program Grant (all UMCs and partners may apply) or for an Imagine No Malaria Grant (for African UMC health boards only), please contact Nyamah Dunbar, Deputy Director, Malaria Initiative.

Gifts to this program via UMCOR Advance #3021190 can make a big difference:

• Provides medication to treat someone with malaria.
• Purchases and delivers one insecticide-treated mosquito net.
• Covers the expenses for an anti-malaria campaign in a local school.
• Trains traditional birth attendants in malaria prevention and treatment.
• $500 Provides all the expenses for a one day community leader training for 35-40 attendees on malaria prevention
• is the cost of a motorbike for a community health team in Liberia or Sierra Leone
• $4,000 purchases a year's worth of malaria laboratory test kits for all UMC clinics in Bo District, Sierra Leone
• $5,000 supports a bed net distribution program targeting pregnant women and children in 20 communities in Liberia.
• $10,000 purchases anti-malarial medications for patients cared for in a rural hospital in Nigeria for one year.
• $20,000 underwrite a health board training for both annual conferences in Angola, to assist our church in developing a strategic community-based health and malaria prevention plan.

For additional resources about malaria, visit the Imagine No Malaria web page.

UMCOR Malaria Timeline

2005: UMCOR’s Malaria Control Program was launched in late 2005 in Sierra Leone and is now operating in various countries around the globe. This program works with communities to form comprehensive plans to combat malaria. At the community level, UMCOR works to eliminate stagnant water and trash around people’s homes. With your help, we are able to provide training, free or low cost medications, consultations, Indoor Residual Spraying, and insecticide-treated nets to individuals and families. UMCOR’s efforts target pregnant women and children in particular, who are most vulnerable.

2006: When the United Nations Foundation Nothing But Nets Program launched more than five years ago within the UMC, the concept spread like wild fire throughout the denomination.  Led by our youth in particular, the UMC has raised more than $ 9 million to send life-saving insecticide treated mosquito nets to Africa and join the global fight to prevent unnecessary deaths from malaria. When United Methodist Churches and Annual Conferences contributed to Nothing But Nets programs in Sub-Sahara Africa, UMCOR worked with UMC health teams in Africa to distribute the nets and implement the training follow up programs.

2008: United Methodists pledged to support a “Global Health Initiative” at General Conference. It was determined that the issue of malaria in Africa would serve as the initial focal or entry point for the larger denominational conversation about health worldwide.

2010: Since the launch of Nothing But Nets and the Global Health Initiative, we as a denomination have learned more about the complexities of malaria, other related health challenges, and all the issues tied to poverty and development.  In an effort to honor both the enthusiasm of Nothing But Nets, but wanting to do even more for malaria, the

Imagine No Malaria

The Campaign was launched in April 2010, with a dual celebration in Lubumbashi, DRCongo and Austin, TX. In addition to bed nets, our efforts support other areas in the fight against malaria: environmental clean-up (stagnant water and trash), basic sanitation (latrines and water), treatment, education, training more health care workers, and improving our existing hospitals and clinics. UMCOR’s role in this campaign is to help UMC health boards and local communities develop strategic plans and propose integrated solutions. All of these efforts will be needed in order to combat malaria and other diseases of poverty in Africa; and United Methodists are responding.

More resources are available from The Global Fund for AIDS/TB/Malaria, and the World Health Organization. Our partners in this effort include the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and the U.N. Foundation.