wfn.org | Health Ministries pushes to reduce malaria and AIDS world-wide

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Note #6616 from PCUSA NEWS to PRESBYNEWS:

12-June-2001
GA01059

Health Ministries pushes to reduce malaria and AIDS world-wide

by Alexa Smith	

LOUISVILLE, June 12 -The director of the Worldwide Ministries Division (WMD)
has pledged to climb the exhibit hall wall if Presbyterian donors "reach
deeper" into their pockets to help the church increase its efforts to fight
AIDS and malaria this year.

	"This is a time to take extraordinary efforts," the Rev. Marian McClure
told her listeners at the International Health Breakfast Tuesday morning,
describing the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.)'s new ties to the World Health
Organization's "Massive Effort" campaign to reduce AIDS, malaria and
tuberculosis.  "And I've been climbing the walls to figure out how to do
that."

	She's not alone.

	Gautoni D. Kainja of  the General Synod Standing Committee of the Church of
Central Africa told about 40 listeners , "AIDS is a crisis world-wide, but
in Sub-Saharan Africa, it is a disaster.  In Malawi, we are in a state of
emergency.

	"The disease has reached such proportions that even some of us living there
don't believe the statistics."

	Kainja said that the church has about 300 ministers serving over 3 million
Presbyterians in Malawi and much of their time is spent doing funerals and
visiting the sick, if they are not sick themselves.  "The disease," he said,
"is not sparing anybody - not even pastors."

	The church is pushing hard to reduce the cost of AIDS' medicines for
Malawi's poorest and is promoting abstinence and faithfulness as a strategy
for stopping the spread of the disease; the government is educating people
about the use of condoms.  Care of orphans is also a priority.

	"We still need medical personnel," Kainja said, adding that hospitals need
financial support as well.  "We need you to pray for the people ... and to
pray for your missionaries.  It is worse than a battlefield there.  This is
a slow, painful death.  And your missionaries see it.  I think you need to
pray for them."

	The other WMD push is a joint program of Presbyterian Women (PW) and
International Health Ministries where U.S. Christians are sewing and
shipping insecticide-treated mosquito nets to Asia and Africa, where malaria
is one of the primary killers of children and pregnant women.

	Networkers' coordinator Gail Bingham, said that PW has sewn 5,000 nets and
is still going, expanding a program that began in 1998 in Cameroon and
Malawi, to six other countries.

	Dr. Dorothy Brewster-Lee told her listeners that blood tests have confirmed
a 75 percent decrease in malaria parasites among children using treated
mosquito nets.  Malaria is the number one cause of death of children under
five in Africa.

	Networkers is a community-based health project that supplies women in
African congregations with nets.  Those women then teach local folks how to
treat and use them.  According to Bingham, a gift of $10 buys a mosquito net
and health for one child; a $5,000 gift helps women establish a complete
malaria prevention program in their community.

	"In the churches, we have a groundswell of people," said Brewster-Lee.  
She said that the outreach by local folks is more effective than
distributing nets through hospitals.

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