Save Children Suffering from Malaria

Imagine what you would do if your daughter came down with a dangerous but treatable illness. You would take her to the pediatrician and get a prescription for the medicine she needs. For a co-pay of only 78 cents, you would pick up the medicine from the pharmacy and give it to your daughter. Within a week or two, she would fully recover.

Now imagine that you and your daughter live in South Sudan, where there is no pediatrician, let alone a pharmacy to turn to, and you don’t have 78 cents to purchase the medicine. How would you get your daughter the lifesaving help she needs?

Yes, this is the reality thousands of parents in South Sudan are facing right now. Raging floodwaters from an excessive rainy season are breeding disease-carrying mosquitoes at exponential rates, spreading malaria and waterborne diseases across the region as you read this.

As per usual, the hardest hit are children. Forced to flee to higher ground and camp out in makeshift shelters, the lack of access to clean water or medical care in their current living conditions is appalling. The spread of malaria is rampant. Mosquitoes lay eggs in the puddles and stagnant water that is everywhere. Just one mosquito alone can produce up to 500 larvae. One bite from a malaria-carrying insect can induce weeks of fever, chills, vomiting, and dehydration. Left untreated, these symptoms lead to rapid breathing, spontaneous bleeding, severe anemia, seizing, unconsciousness, and often death.

But these children don’t have to die.

A child can be cured of malaria with a simple medication known as Coartem that costs just 78 cents per dose. It comes in a tablet form that can be chewed just like a baby aspirin. If treated early, an infected child can get well within two weeks. All of us would be more than willing to give this amount to help a dying child. But we get busy. We don’t have the time to stop and help. We have many causes we already give to. The list goes on. But so does the death toll. The fact that you’re reading this shows you have compassion toward people in humanitarian crises. The children are in a crisis right now.

Children just like Amira need help. Amira is normally a carefree seven-year-old who loves to sing and help take care of the animals. She was forced to flee her home when the floodwaters came. There was no time to save the livestock. Her mother carried her over her shoulders to keep Amira from being swept away.

Now they search for edible leaves and wait with uncertainty for clean water to arrive in their crude makeshift camp. Some families are fortunate to have protective mosquito netting to help them through the nights; Amira’s family does not. With the rains and burgeoning mosquito population around their unprotected shelter, it was only a matter of time until Amira was bitten and infected with malaria. Tragically, this little girl’s life is now in danger because of a simple mosquito bite and a disease that has a cure.

But Amira doesn’t have to be a victim of this preventable illness. Can you stop for just a couple of minutes today and give a donation for medicine? You will save a child from dying by malaria because you provided lifesaving medicine for her. Think about the impact that simple act of yours will make. That’s how powerful your gift is. That’s what you can accomplish today with just a few minutes of your time.

Please make this a day you choose to save a child’s life. We use your donations and work through our partners on the ground, like Nurse Noeleen Laughran, along with hospitals and clinics across the region to reach those in desperate need. Together we can provide rapid testing, protective mosquito netting, and Coartem tablets to halt malaria’s progress in an infected child like Amira.

Sincerely,

Neil A. Corkery President