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RSSOctober 24, Proper 25
by the Rev. Barbara Cawthorne Crafton for ERD
10/24/2004
Jeremiah 14:(1-6)7-10,19-22
Ps 84
II Timothy 4:6-8,16-18
Luke 18:9-14
"For everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, but he who humbles himself will be exalted." -- Luke 18:14 (NRSV)
Ask a person who has lived in a tropical country if she has malaria—she may not have the disease, but she won't be surprised at the question, or at your use of the present tense in asking it. Many people know its unmistakable prelude: sudden fatigue, chills, know to get themselves to a place where they can lie down and endure the fever, uncontrollable shaking, even coma they know is coming. Malaria doesn't have a cure -- it comes and goes as long as the person afflicted with it lives. If you're lucky, you don't die from it, although the fever can go so high it kills you. You will definitely die with it, though, and a malaria attack can leave you weak for weeks afterward.
But small children who contract it are in grave danger of dying from the effects of dehydration and anemia that accompany malarial infection. One in twenty children in Africa dies from the disease, and in some afflicted areas the number rises to one in six.
There are drugs to ease malaria patients through their attacks, or even to ward them off—the most famous one is quinine, which provided generations with a rationale for the oceans of drinks consumed throughout the British Empire. But now there are newer, more sophisticated—if less convivial—ways of administering quinine and other drug therapies for the disease.
Still, it remains true that the best way to deal with malaria is never to get it. And the best way to accomplish this is the simplest: sleep under mosquito netting treated with an insecticide that will hurt the malaria-bearing mosquitoes but won't hurt you. You don't need a doctor or a drug to give this protection to your child. Every mother can do it. A simple solution to a grave medical danger. Through Episcopal Relief and Development’s malaria program, mothers in Zambia and in the Democratic Republic of Congo are being given the nets for use in their homes, instructed in their use and in spotting the early signs of malarial infection in their children. When infection does occur, especially in a child, ERD gives health workers, hospitals and clinics in the isolated villages anti-malarial drugs and trains them in their effective use—early in the course of an individual's infection, while there may still be time to arrest the deadly progress of the most dangerous symptoms.
The sophisticated drugs and the trained health professionals are of great value. But it is the simple nets and the watchful mothers and trusted ERD-trained local healthcare workers upon which the future health of these poor communities depend most. A simple tool, used by humble people, and the whole village is exalted: a safer childhood for each of its children.
Episcopal Relief and Development saves lives and builds hope in communities around the world. We provide emergency assistance in times of disaster. When the immediate crisis is over, we rebuild devastated communities and offer long-term solutions in the areas of food security, health care, and HIV/AIDS.
