Interfaith action can end malaria crisis

By JOHN BRIDGELAND and JEAN DUFF

For years, “malaria day” in Africa was a somber occasion. Another year would come and go, and another million people would die from a fully preventable and treatable disease. Malaria was often viewed as just a “fact of life” and disease of last priority. No more.

This year’s “World Malaria Day” — officially April 25 — has much to celebrate.

In the last few years, bold goals have been set and new resources mobilized. By 2010, the ambition is to cover every person in malaria-endemic Africa with a life-saving bed net that prevents the deadly bite of a mosquito at night. By 2015, the international community wants to see no more deaths from malaria.

Those goals are now within reach. International funding for malaria control has skyrocketed from $250 million in 2004 to $3 billion in 2008, due in large part to U.S. leadership through the Global Fund, the World Bank and the President’s Malaria Initiative. New resources are funding and distributing nets and drugs to those who need them according to plans designed by African nations. More than 150 million nets offering protection to 300 million people were delivered to Africa through 2008. To close the remaining gap by the end of 2010, more than 240 million nets have already been financed for delivery.

There is much to celebrate. Malaria deaths have rapidly declined in countries like Ethiopia, Eritrea, Ghana, Kenya, Rwanda, Sao Tome and Principe. The Tanzanian island of Zanzibar has reduced deaths to nearly zero. In Zambia, the incidence of malaria in children has dropped by 50 percent.

But gaps remain, including in the use of nets and effective treatments. Faith-based institutions can help.

Saving lives

Found in every village in Africa, a church or mosque can help save lives. Imams and pastors, elders and parishioners are trusted by local people and well positioned to educate their communities on the use of nets, and other ways to prevent and treat malaria. Faith-based institutions have the ability to mobilize large numbers of volunteers who can help hang bed nets properly and ensure people know what to do when their child runs a fever that might signal malaria. Churches also keep good records on births, marriages and deaths and can do the same for malaria infections and deaths, working in concert with community health centers, hospitals and governments.

Forty percent of those who die in Africa from malaria are Muslim, with the remainder largely Christian. Faith-based collaborations against malaria can unite people of different faiths to tackle a common enemy.

An unprecedented national interfaith partnership in Nigeria — the Nigerian Interfaith Action Association — led by Sultan Muhammadu Sa’ad Abubakar of Sokoto and the Most Reverend John Onaiyekan, Archbishop of Abuja, unites Christian and Muslim leaders across the country in a new ecumenism of action to end malaria. The Center for Interfaith Action on Global Poverty is working to spread this interfaith partnership with national governments across Africa to help end malaria.

This year, World Malaria Day is a hopeful moment in the long journey to end malaria. With nearly one million deaths and 300 million infections from this preventable and treatable disease, it’s not a moment too soon.

X John M. Bridgeland is vice chairman of Malaria No More and Jean Duff is executive director of the Center for Interfaith Action to End Global Poverty. Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Information Services.