Kenya resident Habakkuk Khamala, his wife and five children all suff er from malaria.

Life is a constant struggle for Khamala because of the disease, said David Freeman, a friend of Khamala’s and the lead advocate for the Arkansas Conference of the United Methodist Church for Imagine No Malaria.

“He’s lost three other children in death to malaria,” Freeman said.

Freeman met Khamala in Kenya in 2005 while he was visiting Freeman’s father, who was a Peace Corps volunteer at the time. Khamala and Freeman’s father had become very close friends.

Khamala once told Freeman that his daughter had a flare up of malaria one night, experiencing a high fever, chills and cramping.

“He thought she was going to die,” Freeman said.

Because he didn’t have a car, a neighbor took them to a clinic, but it didn’t have the resources to treat her. His daughter was then taken to a private hospital for treatment. They gave her medication to get her through the symptoms but did not cure her of the malaria, Freeman said. They did not treat the parasite inside her.

The hospital bills are “astronomical,” and Khamala - who earns about $1,500 each year as a farmer - had to sell his only cow to pay the bills, Freeman added. The cow provided milk and income for his family.

“This is how he’s trapped in this cycle of poverty, just because of malaria,” he said.

Malaria is a serious, sometimes fatal disease caused by a parasite that commonly infects a certain type of mosquito that feeds on humans, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention website.

Freeman said he believes in Imagine No Malaria because it’s “about helping real people,” like his friend in Kenya. Imagine No Malaria is an eff ort of the people of the United Methodist Church, putting their faith into action to end preventable deaths by malaria in Africa, especially the death of a childor mother, according to the Imagine No Malaria website. Freeman said the United Methodist Church has targeted malaria and the eradication of the disease for several years.

One of the first ways to target malaria was a program called Nothing But Nets, which provided insecticide-treated bed nets under which people sleep as a preventative measure against getting bitten by mosquitoes, which is how malaria is transmitted, Freeman said. Imagine No Malaria is an expansion of Nothing But Nets. It is combining prevention, treatment, education, communication and advocacy, he said.

“The first goal is to eradicate deaths from malaria by 2015,” Freeman said.

The United Methodist Church has set a national goal for raising $75 million by 2015. The funds will be used as they are gathered because they are trying to end the deaths now, Freeman said. The Arkansas Conference of United Methodist Church has set a goal of raising $1.1 million by 2015, he said. The goal is to have 100 percent of the Methodist churches in Arkansas participate in raising money. Between 35 and 40 percent are currently taking part, he noted.

Freeman, who is also executive pastor at First United Methodist Church in Springdale, said his church has a goal of raising $50,000 by 2015. The church committed to the goal in June 2012, and just less than $20,000 has been raised so far.

“With Imagine No Malaria, $10 saves a life,” he said.

This church is raising money through monthly communion offerings, a tip cup in the coffee area and a recent golf event called Strokes Fore Malaria, which raised more than $5,000.

Another church in the area with a fundraising goal is Central United Methodist Church in Fayetteville. Starting in September, the church made a pledge to raise $100,000 during the next two years, said Jody Farrell, director of missions and lay mobilization at the Fayetteville church. The congregation is taking monthly offerings on the first Sunday of every month and have raised$3,000. He said the church is working on other ideas and events to bring in funds for the initiative.

Farrell has taken mission trips to Uganda with Central United Methodist Church since 2007. He said they were very involved in the Nothing But Nets initiative.

“On our mission trips, we’ve given out thousands of treated nets to help people,” Farrell said.

“The average person in Sub-Saharan Africa gets malaria to the same degree that a lot of us get the common cold,” Farrell said.

Farrell and his wife adopted a girl from Uganda in June 2011, and all of her family members suffered from malaria. He said it was never confirmed if she previously had malaria.

Malaria is completely insectdriven, and the mosquito is the vector, said Lisa Rojeski, certified physician assistant for Dr. Stephen Hennigan, an infectious diseases specialist in Fayetteville.

“If you don’t get bit, you won’t get sick,” she said.

Symptoms can depend on the different types of malaria but might include severe fatigue, high fever, shaking and chills. Fever is the biggest symptom, she added.

It can be prevented by taking medication, and if a person gets malaria, it can be treated with diff erent drug regimens, depending on the type of malaria, Rojeski said. It is curable with treatment.

There is some resistance to medications in various areas, so there are diff erent medications that are appropriate for different geographic areas, Rojeski said.

Medicines to treat malariaare costly, Farrell said. The Imagine No Malaria initiative is helping to make those medicines affordable and get them to the places they are needed most, he said. The volunteers are also trying to get people medicines that do not just treat the symptoms but attack the parasite residing in a lot of suff erers.

“They are trying to get the right drugs in the right place at the right time,” Freeman said.

Imagine No Malaria means “an opportunity to impact a vast amount of people in Sub-Saharan Africa to improve their chances of living, to enhance their quality of life and allow them the opportunity to hear the good news about Jesus Christ,” Farrell said. He is passionate about the initiative “because it attaches the name of Jesus to a service that actually does save physically and bring hope spiritually.”

Religion, Pages 10 on 10/12/2013