Our Work
ELCA Malaria Campaign
Why a campaign against malaria?
For a long time, the ELCA has been supporting clinics and programs in Africa to provide health care. Now we’re focusing on malaria with a new intensity. Malaria kills 655,000 people each year, most are children under five. That’s a child
every 60 seconds. The ELCA, through the
ELCA Malaria Campaign, is joining hands with eleven Lutheran church bodies in Africa and becoming part of an historic global movement to say, “enough is enough!” No child, no person, should die of a disease that is both preventable and treatable. Therefore the ELCA Malaria Campaign has committed to raise $15 million to help prevent, treat and educate communities in Africa about malaria and eliminate deaths from this disease—for good.
Malaria Facts
- Almost 9 out to 10 of the 655,000 people who die from malaria each year live in Africa.
- An African child has on average between 1.6 and 5.4 episodes of malaria each year.
- In countries with high rates of malaria, the disease accounts for up to 60 percent of health clinic visits and 50 percent of hospital stays.
Why the ELCA?
For many years, the ELCA has been building relationships of accompaniment and mutual respect with our companion churches in Africa. Together with our church partners, we are poised to bring about a massive grassroots movement to contain malaria and bring hope to those who suffer.
Lutheran churches in Africa aren’t just places of worship. They are the center of community life. That’s what makes our work—the work of the church, through churches—perfectly positioned to make a difference.
How we work
The ELCA Malaria Campaign funds programs of our companion churches that:
- provide life-saving health care—including medicine to treat malaria
- train health care providers and church volunteers to diagnose and treat malaria
- teach people how to protect themselves from the mosquitoes that spread malaria, recognize symptoms and seek treatment
- distribute insecticide-treated mosquito nets and provide training on their use
- provide preventative medication to protect pregnant women and their babies
- encourage governments to provide adequate heath care and malaria prevention activities
- support water treatment projects to control the environments where mosquitoes breed
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