ATLANTA –Mpox, previously known as Monkey Pox, was so-named because it was first found in a distinct species of monkeys in Central and West Africa rainforests. But squirrels, pouched rats, mice and several other species have also been found to pass on this virus, which, when contracted by humans, is similar to smallpox.

The Africa Center for Disease Control reported that at least 13 African countries, including previously unaffected nations like Burundi, Kenya, Rwanda and Uganda, have reported mpox outbreaks, with suspected cases across the continent surging past 17,000, a significant increase from 7,146 cases in 2022 and 14,957 cases in 2023.

The Democratic Republic of Congo, one of the countries with limited access to testing and care where the Global Ministries’ Global Health unit supports United Methodist health facilities, reported most (96%) of the confirmed mpox cases.

Dr. Damas Lushima, the UMC Health Board Coordinator for the East Congo Episcopal Area, notified Global Health staff: “The mpox situation has affected three provinces in the East of the republic and the situation is becoming worrying in South Kivu, North Kivu and Maniema.” Maniema province, with its capital in Kindu, is where the East Congo Episcopal Area offices are headquartered.

Dr. Megh Raj Jagriti, a program manager for Global Health, said that in recent weeks there has been an unprecedented increase in the number of countries in the WHO African region reporting mpox cases and outbreaks with almost 1,000 new cases reported in June 2024 alone, bringing the total number of cumulative suspected cases to 14,091: 2,673 confirmed cases and 511 deaths (majority in the DRC) by July 22, 2024.

The Global Health unit is providing technical resources, assistance and recommendations to United Methodist health board partners across Africa that are affected by this current mpox outbreak. When public health emergencies arise, UMC-supported health boards are equipped to respond because of the routine support they receive annually from Global Health. East Congo, Central Congo, North Katanga and South Congo health boards have all received various Global Ministries annual grants since 2017 to maintain adequate medicines and medical supplies, build new water facilities in selected sites, refurbish buildings and wards, and provide specialized training to medical personnel for sustainable health outcomes.

Roland Fernandes, Global Ministries’ general secretary, noted: “We are committed to ensuring that vulnerable communities are safe and protected from disease outbreaks and other health emergencies. We do this by strengthening the health systems of the health board partners to detect, evaluate and respond in a timely and sustainable manner to this and other kinds of health emergencies.”

Christie R. House is a consultant writer and editor with Global Ministries and UMCOR.

Global Health
Through United Methodist conferences and health boards, Global Ministries works to strengthen whole networks of health responses, from revitalization of facilities and staff training to building better water sources, developing sanitation facilities and promoting nutrition. Global Health concentrates on eradicating preventable diseases, such as malaria, HIV and AIDS, and COVID-19, and supporting the most vulnerable populations, including mothers, newborns and children.

Support the work of global health.

The post UMC health facilities prepared and responding to mpox cases appeared first on Global Ministries.

ATLANTA – “On days that I was away from home from 7:00 a.m. to 6:00 p.m., I didn’t worry about eating because of the Koala Pantry. When my family’s refrigerator broke for weeks I was able to eat well. Without this resource, I would not have been able to complete either semester.”

Food insecurity on college campuses is often a hidden problem because students do not want to admit they are in need…until colleges establish free or low-cost food ministries and discover how many students use them.

Columbia College in South Carolina was one of seven colleges that received Global Ministries’ grants last year to develop pantries or other means of supplying food and hygiene supplies for students. The colleges receiving grants, made possible by Human Relations Sunday offerings, were all United-Methodist related institutions with significant numbers of enrolled students of color with diverse racial and ethnic backgrounds.

At Columbia College’s Koala Pantry, some students who frequented the pantry disclosed that they would not have been able to continue their college education without it. For students without reserve income for basic necessities, it is difficult to focus on being a full-time student while working to scrape together an income.

“The Koala Pantry has been one of my favorite services on campus,” noted another Columbia student. “I have used it many times, along with several of my teammates, when we needed to grab a quick snack between classes and practices. As a volunteer at the Koala Pantry this past spring semester (2023), I also witnessed how much good it does for many other students. I noticed that many rely on the pantry’s supply throughout the week.”

While the grants were used to set up or refurbish existing pantries, these full-time ministries need full-time partners to keep supplies stocked and volunteers working. All of the grantees last year fostered additional resources to keep their pantries viable throughout the year.

At Greensboro College in the Western North Carolina Conference, Tyler Smith, a former student, current theological student and the Greensboro College Community Service coordinator, notes a number of ways they found to support their new Pride Pantry, one of three available on the campus.

Greensboro College works with its athletic teams and honors societies to host food drives to support the pantries. In addition, they partner with Spartan Open Pantry, hosted by College Place United Methodist Church in Greensboro, to give students access to a larger food pantry that provides hot meals throughout the week.

“We hope to shine a spotlight on food insecurity on college campuses and we also plan to offer educational opportunities for our staff to discover more about the issue and make a difference in students’ lives,” Smith noted in a video about the Pride Pantry.

Emory and Henry College in Virginia opened the Stinger’s Supply Shelf a couple years ago and its Bonner scholar program helps to coordinate the pantry operation. Appalachian Center for Civic Life helps to supply volunteers. The campus food vendor, Sodexo, maintains the food supply and churches and individuals donate hygiene supplies.

In Waleska, Georgia, Reinhardt University upgraded its pantry to increase the hours of operation. Dr. Walter May, Reinhardt’s dean of students, notes their grant was used to expand access to the pantry with a card-access system; increase storage space; install air conditioning and acquire a base inventory of hygiene products, as well as food preparation and cookware items, such as bowls, plates and utensils.

“The research is clear that college students without reliable food access earn lower grades and suffer higher levels of stress,” says May. “The food pantry is one of many university strategies that supports our students and is an important part of the Student Health Center’s outlook on student life – caring for the whole person.”

Birmingham Southern College in Alabama used its grant to focus on the college’s “E-term” or January term, outside the regular 2-semester schedule of classes. Students themselves developed the idea for a free food market during the extra term that provides fresh produce, breads, meats and dairy. The market was free-of-charge to all students, and open 24/7. This resource was embraced and heavily utilized by the students; the shelves were nearly empty by each week’s restocking.

Students attending colleges and universities from diverse economic backgrounds often experience financial independence for the first time and they must learn how to balance work and being a full-time student. Many college campuses are surprisingly far from affordable grocery stores, so students without cars find themselves living in a food desert, and if they miss a campus meal, they go without food until the next is served. Working in partnership with Global Ministries, churches, businesses and volunteer agencies, United Methodist-related institutions are responding to this particular form of food insecurity.

Christie R. House is a consultant writer and editor with Global Ministries and UMCOR.

EVANGELISM AND CHURCH REVITALIZATION

Founding and nurturing new faith communities and supporting existing congregations that seek to increase membership and expand ministries into local communities have historic roots and contemporary implications for Global Ministries. Missionaries who train pastors to plant churches in new places; mission initiatives, which start new Methodist faith communities; scholarships that assist church leaders to earn the credentials and degrees they need for service and ministry; and networks that resource racial and ethnic faith communities across the United States are examples of Global Ministries’ commitment to evangelism and church revitalization.

Human Relations Day is an opportunity to stand with other United Methodist churchesto build the beloved community envisioned by the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. This denominationwide Special Sunday is designed to strengthen human relationships and community outreach. By participating in the Human Relations Day offering, United Methodists embrace the power of relationships, the strength of community and the good news that all of God’s children are of sacred value.

Gifts made on Human Relations Day, Jan. 14, 2024, support the Community Developers Program as well as community advocacy through the United Methodist Voluntary Services administered through Global Ministries.

The post Responding to food insecurity on college campuses appeared first on Global Ministries.

Chicuque Rural Hospital, situated close to Inhambane Bay in Maxixe, the largest city in Mozambique’s Inhambane province, is considered a rural hospital. Though close to this urban center, it is in a remote area, a place where the road is deteriorating, and access is difficult. But it is also where an average of 94,000 people from four rural provinces come for health care each year.

The Rev. Arlindo Romão, the hospital administrator, takes all this in stride as he seeks to provide the best heath care possible. “Chicuque Rural Hospital is a public hospital unit,” he explained to a reporter, “therefore of the Government of Mozambique. But a legal decree allows capable collective entities to take over a hospital and manage it. It was based on this provision that The United Methodist Church of Mozambique offered to help the government. The hospital is currently under the full management of the UMC.”

The government supports the cost of staff, electricity and water, equipment, medicines and medical supplies as much as it can while the international UMC and other donors assist with service gaps and special projects.

One reason United Methodists of Mozambique offered to do this after the government took over public institutions in 1976 is that the hospital was founded in 1915 by the Methodist Episcopal Church. Dr. Charles J. Stauffacher and his wife, Grace Belkins Stauffacher, arrived as medical missionaries from Wisconsin in 1913. The Stauffachers got to work immediately in Chicuque, making regular rounds also in Cambine and Inhumbane, but Dr. Stauffacher decided the hospital was most needed in Chicuque, Maxixe, where he built the first clinic.

While the hospital’s historical legacy gives it rich experience, buildings in Africa’s various climates rarely last a century, and much of Chicuque’s infrastructure has had to be rebuilt. The UMC of Mozambique established a health board to coordinate the work of Chicuque and two other United Methodist health clinics, Cambine, established the same time period as Chicuque, and Maqueze, which was built in the 1980s. The Rev. Maria Matsinhe is the Health Board coordinator.

Global Ministries’ Global Health works with the Mozambique UMC Health Board to fund specific building projects and other facility infrastructure. Over the years, targeted support has been related to malaria; mother, newborn and child health; HIV and AIDS; and water and sanitation needs, all Global Health priorities in African UMC health work.

In 2017, with its proximity to the bay, Chicuque sustained major flood damage from Cyclone Dineo. Currently, the hospital’s emergency unit has been repaired, a new emergency patient alert system installed, and basic furnishings and medical supplies replaced. Going forward, Global Ministries’ has just approved a grant to work on the maternity unit roof and a complete reconstruction of the Expectant Mothers’ Waiting House, where mothers who must travel great distances to reach Chicuque arrange to stay near the time of their expected deliveries.

Hospital evaluations conducted by the Mozambique Government in 2023 classified Chicuque as having 100% improvement in infrastructure and meeting 80% of all other markers, though, in many cases, Chicuque was in the 90% range. These results prompted a grant from the World Bank for the hospital and its health center, a separate facility.

Nearly 40 miles from Chicuque is Cambine, another UMC mission with an education center, including 2,000 students at several educational levels, and an orphanage, health center and small farm where innovative food production methods have been developed and passed on to farmers in the community.

The health center offers primary health care and maternal, newborn and child health services. It also has a small inpatient unit for about 20 patients, but the building has needed repair for a long time and the roof damage was exacerbated by Cyclone Freddy’s high winds earlier this year. The health board has been working with the Global Health unit on a 2023 grant to repair this facility as well as other essential buildings, like the Waiting Mothers Home.

The staff are motivated and busy at the health center, organizing regular mobile clinics to help reach those living far from services. One of the midwives is Florence Kaying, a Global Ministries missionary from the Democratic Republic of Congo. She has worked at Cambine and in the community for five years, learning the language, customs and how to impact health behavior while she has consulted pregnant women, delivered their babies and followed-up with care.

Each month, Matsinhe, the Health Board coordinator, calls on the community to own their health facility, asking them to help with general maintenance on the property. Several congregations have also made contributions with cleaning materials.

While Chicuque and Cambine are on the coastal side of Inhambane province, Maqueze is inland to the southeast in Gaza province, about a six-hour drive away – rural and very busy.

It too has experienced significant storm damage and the building is compromised. A separate corrugated iron room accommodates pregnant women who don’t have access to services closer to their villages, and a third building houses the female nursing staff. There is no doctor. Like the other two health facilities, the health team sees patients with primary health care needs, offers maternal newborn and child health services, and diagnoses and treats malaria. Maqueze is also a treatment center for those with tuberculosis and HIV.

In 2024, the health board will receive a grant to initiate renovations here, including water, sanitation and hygiene interventions. In the meantime, the government offers support through staff, medicines and medical supplies, and the community works at maintenance and care in partnership with the nursing staff.

Though it has been more than a century since Methodist medical missionaries arrived in Mozambique to establish Western-style medical missions and facilities in remote places, health ministries supported by the United Methodist Church save lives and continue to serve some of the most vulnerable populations today. Without them, thousands of people would have no health center in reasonable traveling distance. The dedication and conviction of Mozambican health professionals extends the UMC mission tradition of providing health care for all God’s people.

Christie R. House is a consultant writer and editor with Global Ministries and UMCOR.

Global Health

Methodism’s focus on health as a part of mission dates back to the 19th and 20th centuries when missionaries expanded the options for health care in underserved communities. Today, through United Methodist conferences and health boards, Global Ministries works to strengthen whole networks of health responses, from revitalization of facilities and staff training to building better water sources, developing sanitation facilities and promoting nutrition. Global Health concentrates on eradicating preventable diseases, such as malaria, HIV and AIDS, and COVID-19, and supporting the most vulnerable populations, including mothers, newborns and children.

One way to partner with Global Health ministries is to give a gift to the Abundant Health Advance, #3021770.

The post United Methodist health care in Mozambique upholds tradition and expertise appeared first on Global Ministries.

By Christie R. House
September 19, 2022 | ATLANTA

Suzanne has lived in the Mulongo community in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) all her life – except for the time of year when epidemics such as cholera broke out. Then the whole family moved out of the village away from the Congo River to wait for the disease to run its course. Her family has good reasons for doing this.

Suzanne summed up their philosophy this way: “It was better to flee than to wait and catch cholera, which can take many members of your family in a very short time.”

When she was growing up, Suzanne lived in a household of three extended families with a total of 31 people – four adults and 27 children. Her remote village had no medicine for cholera. One year, Suzanne’s mother and another mother in the household died. She also lost four brothers and 15 more of the children in her extended family, bringing the number in the family from 31 to 11.

All of these family members were lost in the space of two months, even though the family moved several times that year to try to mitigate the spread. Finally, her father took the remaining family members miles away from the river. He did this every time an outbreak occurred, even though it disrupted the children’s schooling.

Today, at 38 years of age, Suzanne is one of the few in her family to survive. She is married with 12 children of her own, but her family no longer flees to avoid exposure to cholera and other waterborne diseases. Several health partners have come together to bring hope to Suzanne and other residents of the region.

Global Ministries’ Global Health program has been working on cholera with the United Methodist North Katanga Health Board for several years, supporting several communities like Mulongo. A phased grant process is assisting the North Katanga UMC as it joins forces with other health partners to arrest the spread and prevent future outbreaks in this specific region.

Working with the Democratic Republic of Congo Provincial Health Department, local health programs and Doctors Without Borders, the UMC has joined an overall effort through Global Health to: clean up and test community water sources; build sanitation facilities; stock and distribute infection prevention control materials and medicines to treat cholera in its clinics; and enhance local community education efforts on how cholera is contracted and spread through contaminated water sources.

As a result of these various efforts, Suzanne has learned how to protect her family and where to receive treatment, medicine, and prevention and hygiene supplies during cholera outbreaks.

“With awareness and training, I am no longer afraid of cholera because before we did not respect hygiene measures and there was no help,” Suzanne said. “Since the digging of wells, construction of public toilets and instruction of households to build their own toilets, we may go a year or more without cholera being declared in our community.”

As soon as the epidemic broke out in 2021, the United Methodist health facilities with support from Global Health were early responders, which limited the number of deaths in the community. A population that would otherwise have tried to leave their communities to escape the disease visited the health centers instead, where cholera treatment was offered without charge. Clinics distributed aqua tabs with chlorine to filter water in homes.

Success has come for Mulongo and a couple nearby villages with a lot of hard work thanks to this integrated community health effort. But more work needs to be done, because cholera has now affected new communities down river who have not yet received the training. It will likely appear again in Mulongo too, as a recurring problem.

A main accomplishment has been to change the behavior of community members. Many now avoid collecting river water for household use and to draw from wells that are tested and treated for safety or spring water collected at the source, which is still filtered before use in the household.

The North Katanga Episcopal Area coordinates additional clinics and health centers along the Congo River. Dr. Alexis Ngoy Kasole Maloba, the North Katanga health board coordinator, plans to continue to move into new villages to stock the clinics with medicines and rehydration kits, train more community members to intensify prevention efforts and provide hygiene kits and chlorination tablets for households that need them.

The current cholera project has completed its second phase. Through monitoring and evaluation, the health board estimates that nearly 400,000 have been reached so far. Inhabitants of the neighboring villages are reached by expanding cholera-prevention educational activities, including broadcasting community-focused discussions via radio.

Th health board includes pastors in its training, so they can recognize the symptoms of cholera. Pastors often visit parishioners who are sick or have had a death in the family. Pastor Jean Pierre Kalunga is more attentive now during house visitations. If he suspects cholera, he may request that the family pray with him outside the house without making direct contact with the sick person.

Then he encourages family members to take the affected individuals to the UMC clinic for diagnosis and treatment. After the prayer, the pastor explains to the family, “I am trained to help people by informing, raising awareness, and transferring the sick from the community to the health center.” Often, he accompanies the family, offering pastoral care.

Reaching families through the UMC health facilities allows the medical staff to provide case management as well as treatment while the prevention activities are ongoing in the community, which helps to identify other risks that might increase transmission of cholera and similar waterborne diseases.

Pastor Jean explains, “You can’t run away from the disease, you have to know what it is and fight it.”

No family should lose 20 members to cholera, a preventable and treatable disease. Help increase the efforts of Global Health interventions by supporting Abundant Health Advance, #3021770.

Christie R. House is a consultant writer and editor with Global Ministries and UMCOR.

The post Stopping the spread of cholera in North Katanga appeared first on Global Ministries.

Methodism was planted and took root 100-years ago among the Otetela-speaking people of Tunda in Eastern Congo. This year, United Methodists there completed construction of a new hospital. 

By Christie R. House 
May 20, 2021 | ATLANTA 

Across the wide Lomami River from Central Congo in a rural area called Tunda, United Methodists have a new hospital, once again. For a century, Methodists in East Congo, in partnership with Methodists from the United States and Europe, have provided health care in this remote, tropical region. Even today, there is no other hospital within a 62-mile radius. Without this facility, 100,000 people would lose access to health services. 

“It’s really one the most remote locations I have visited,” confirmed Tatenda Mujeni, a senior technical advisor for Global Ministries’ Global Health unit. She was part of a Global Health team that visited Tunda in 2018. The area is named after generations of chiefs from the Tunda family, who still live and work here. 

East Congo Methodists tried in 2016 to stabilize the old hospital building, but Dr. Damas Lushima, the United Methodist Health Board Coordinator for the East Congo area, said it could not be saved. 

“The old building was in a state of disrepair, with bats building their homes in the rafters and walls overrun by termites. We feared it would collapse. Even after renovation, it did not meet the standards established by our national health care policy,” he said. By 2018, the maternity ward, a smaller separate building, had lost its roof in a severe storm. 

The hospital’s community health workers, many of whom are United Methodist, continued to visit families regularly. They conducted health checks and referred people for more serious conditions, but fewer people were showing up at the hospital. They were losing confidence. Mujeni wondered where women were delivering their babies without the maternity ward.

Together, East Congo leaders and Global Health staff decided a hospital was still a critical need in Tunda and the solution was to let go of the old building. During the last two years, nine new buildings have been constructed, making up a hospital compound with separate one-story wards for maternity, surgery, infectious disease, x-ray, lab work, and other medical necessities. 

Global Ministries has invested close to half a million dollars in the new Tunda Hospital. With this and other renovations, the Global Health unit, with expertise in the areas of Maternal Newborn Child Health (MNCH), Hospital Systems Strengthening (HSS), infectious disease, primarily through Imagine No Malaria (INM), and Water, Sanitation and Hygiene (WASH), encourages integration of all these areas. 

The new buildings are joined by a covered walkway that is airy and open. Contractors drilled a borehole to tap a clean water source and a pump and pipe system sends water where it is needed. A new solar panel array provides the hospital’s electricity for the water system and for lighting. Even at night, the hospital has light, and women no longer deliver their babies in the dark. New sanitation facilities complete the construction. 

Clean water is also available to people in nearby villages, so community members come to draw water. Clean water goes a long way in preventing disease and improving overall health in the population. 

Global Ministries’ Environmental Sustainability unit provided a viable energy solution for Tunda, which was one of the first UMC facilities to receive a solar panel array system. This type of clean, renewable energy systems doesn’t rely on an intermittent or nonexistent electrical grid. Investing in renewable energy solutions contributes to meeting a net-zero carbon emission goal agreed upon by agencies of the UMC, including Global Ministries. 

The steps taken to strengthen facilities to handle the relentless toll of malaria, prevalent in most of Africa, also help them prepare for other kinds of epidemics, like Ebola, cholera and COVID-19. At the core of epidemic control and prevention is a strong health system. The new facility in Tunda is preparing that community for whatever lies ahead. East Congo oversees 22 other health facilities that Global Health is also helping to strengthen. 

Patients in Tunda say the new one-story, multiple building layout is preferable to the two-story US-style building it replaces. Babo Ndjate, 68-years-old and born and raised in Tunda says his family, including his eight children, have always turned to the hospital for medical care. 

“In the old hospital, we felt confined,” he said. “I like the new buildings. I just returned from a week in the new facility with my 16-year-old son, who suffered from malaria. We appreciated the good conditions in which we spent our treatment time at the hospital.”

Medical work in Tunda has a long history and more than one stubborn Methodist missionary who refused to let the remoteness of the region dictate the quality of health care, education or the knowledge and message of Christ. 

Dr. William Bryant Lewis and his wife, Zaidee Nelson Lewis, arrived as the first medical missionaries from Mississippi in 1923. They followed the Rev. Ansil and Marzie Lynn, who founded the mission in 1922, missionaries from the Methodist Episcopal Church, South. The first “hospital” at Tunda was a traditional Congo-style pole and mud dispensary. Even then, Lewis envisioned an American-style two-story building in which to conduct the mission’s medical work. 

Tunda missionary families: (left) Dr. William Bryant Lewis and Zaidee Nelson Lewis with children; (upper right) Ansil Lynn and Marzie Hall Lynn with their first child; (lower right) Dr. Immanuel Bitsch-Larsen and Valborg Bitsch-Larsen, from Denmark, with their six children. PHOTOS: GENERAL COMMISSION ON ARCHIVES AND HISTORY, MISSION ALBUMS, PORTRAITS.

Zaidee directed the orphanage at Tunda and doubled as a nurse as well. She learned Otetela more quickly than her husband, so while he performed his work he described what he was doing in English and she translated for the Tunda health workers he trained. Lewis finally raised enough funding to break ground for a new hospital in 1943. 

The family dedicated a lifetime of service to the Tunda station. They lost two of their three children and Zaidee died in 1955. Dr. Lewis died a year later after he returned to the U.S. 

The Lewis family served with Dr. Immanuel Bitsch-Larsen and his wife, Valborg, who arrived in 1952, a Methodist physician and nurse from Denmark. They were stationed in Tunda until 1961, when the process of independence from Belgium developed into civil war. Dr. Bitsch-Larsen never forgot his calling and returned to Tunda for short-term missionary service on his own several times. He made his last trip to Tunda in 2009 at the age of 93, with his son, Dr. Lars Bitsch-Larsen, and his daughter, Gunver, a nurse. In answer to a question from a Danish journalist about why he kept returning, Dr. Immanuel said simply, “One must follow one’s calling.” 

Although the buildings of the new Tunda Hospital are completed, the facility is not yet fully functional. Work continues to furnish the wards, supply new medical equipment, and stock medicines, masks and other protective gear. Training is also an ongoing task, but soon, all will come together.

Consider a gift to Abundant Health, Advance # 3021770 to strengthen health care systems in remote places like Tunda. 

Christie R. House is a consultant writer and editor for Global Ministries and UMCOR.

The post A new era for health care in Tunda, East Congo appeared first on Global Ministries.

In Liberia, a United Methodist primary health-care clinic provides a life-saving diagnosis and medication that other health facilities missed.

By Tatenda Mujeni

February 16, 2021 | ATLANTA

All hope was lost for Douboma Wieh and her husband as they returned to their Planpa Town village in Liberia. The 46-year-old mother and grandmother had visited four clinics before traveling to the city as a last resort, seeking treatment for a mysterious month-long illness.

Douboma recounts: “At the hospital, the staff said I had coronavirus and no medicine was available. I was getting worse every day, so my husband carried me back to our village to die, since we were out of money.”

Douboma was stigmatized because of her suspected coronavirus diagnosis while she and her family waited for her imminent death. After Douboma lost consciousness, her family and some young men from the village carried her in a hammock on a four-hour journey to the United Methodist clinic in John Dean Town. The health-care workers there did not turn her away.

Following proper infection prevention protocol, they assessed and retested her. It turns out, Douboma did not have COVID-19; she had malaria. They started her on antimalaria medicine intravenously.

The health-care workers at John Dean Town met Douboma at her point of need. This facility in Liberia is one of more than 100 United Methodist primary health care (PHC) facilities serving communities throughout Africa. Primary health-care centers are the cornerstone of health service delivery globally, with PHCs serving as the first point of health care for an estimated 80% of the population. Often located in rural communities, PHCs provide essential services, such as prevention from infectious diseases, prenatal care, immunizations for mothers and their newborn babies, as well as ongoing disease diagnosis and treatment for the entire community.

Ensuring that United Methodist facilities throughout Africa can provide essential services, such as the lifesaving malaria diagnosis and treatment that Douboma received, is one of the goals of the Health Systems Strengthening program of Global Ministries. Over the last decade, through the United Methodist Committee on Relief and, in the last quadrennium, through Global Health, Global Ministries has invested the gifts of United Methodist donors to build better health services, better-equipped facilities and networks of dedicated health workers who care about raising health standards in their communities.

These goals are reached through partnership with the regional United Methodist health boards that coordinate health care on behalf of the United Methodist conferences they serve.

A major goal of the Health Systems Strengthening program is to provide facilities with trained health-care workers who are equipped to work safely and effectively. In the era of COVID-19, this means training in infection prevention and control as well as providing personal protective equipment for patients and health facility staff.

Another goal is to outfit facilities with essential medications and other medical supplies. Stocking facilities makes lifesaving treatment and prophylaxis from diseases readily available at United Methodist health facilities at little or no cost to the patients.

When asked about the effect medications and supplies have on the community surrounding the 16 HSS-supported facilities in Nigeria, the Health Board Coordinator, Dr. Ogbu, stated: “Availability of essential drugs at the rural health facilities helps to change people’s attitudes toward their health behavior. Once they are aware that there are drugs at the facility, they present earlier, before complication sets in.”

Adequate health infrastructure is vital to successful health service delivery. The HSS program rehabilitates United Methodist facilities like John Dean Town Clinic so they meet the minimum standards for care as defined by the World Health Organization (WHO). These core standards include a safe and stable building, a reliable power supply, a clean water source and access to functional toilets and latrines.

With ongoing support to primary health-care facilities throughout Africa, Global Ministries’ Health Systems Strengthening program provides hope for patients like Douboma who nearly lost her life.

“Thank God for the Methodist people,” Douboma responded. After just two days of treatment, she was feeling more like herself. “Thanks for the good, good medicine they can bring every time. Thank God for all the people who send this good medicine and for the good doctors for poor people. Yes!”

Tatenda Mujeni coordinates Imagine No Malaria and shares oversight of the Health Systems Strengthening program as a program manager with the Global Health unit, General Board of Global Ministries.

The post A cornerstone of healthy communities: the clinic appeared first on Global Ministries.

The United Methodist Church’s Abundant Health Initiative is committed to reaching a million and more children with life-saving interventions, a goal set for the 2016-2020 quadrennium. This commitment is only possible through increasing health access and coverage for many thousands of community members within the reach of United Methodist congregations, health facilities and services. Reaching the most marginalized with healthcare is an issue of justice.

In Liberia, Mardea was carried for two hours in a hammock, during labor, to deliver her baby at Camphor clinic. In Central Congo, the construction crew at Dingele Maternity Center rushed a woman in labor with complications to the hospital in their truck. In Jalingo, Nigeria, the taxi union has been contracted to transport women with obstetric emergencies to UMC health facilities. In Nicaragua’s autonomous regions, a horse or motorboat are on standby.

But there are so many other places around the world where physical access to health care simply isn’t possible. Tragically, women and children die for lack of transport – a bus, a bicycle, a motorbike, a truck – or the money to pay for the service, the confidence or permission to take it, or, finally, the limitations of staff and services available on arrival at a health clinic.

Affordability is at the heart of the matter for many families. Payment for consultation fees or medicines brings about hardship. They must use rent money, miss meals, walk instead of ride, go into debt or lose a day’s income.

For Bhawana, affordability meant a walk of several hours with her husband and mother-in-law in the hills of Western Nepal. She had gone into labor and needed to reach her clinic as quickly as possible. On arrival, the examining nurse found complications that she was not equipped to help with and immediately referred the family to the district hospital. How would they pay for the transport and hospital fees?

It seemed an impossible and life-threatening situation until they realized they qualified, on the spot, for an interest-free loan from a fund created for such emergencies. This fund was initiated through a Global Health grant and, after discussion and agreement, received equal and ongoing contributions from the community and local government.

Health coverage is the actual delivery and receipt of services, but many people are unwilling to seek services near their home because of the attitudes of health workers. True health coverage is access to health care providers themsleves and to quality care offered with dignity in clean facilities. Many women from lower social classes or those simply lacking resources have given birth in poorly equipped and staffed facilities without basic infrastrature, like water or a decent delivery bed, because of years of neglect.

Justice for these women has been realized through the UMC-supported revitalization of their health facilities to provide maternal, newborn and child health care, among other essential serives. Delivery rooms are equipped and medications are available. Health care workers in UMC health facilities are trainied to provide care with dignity, regardless of the indivudal’s background. In Ghana, pregnant women and patients prefer to travel for miles to access the Methodist Health Facilities: “We prefer to come to the Methodist clinic” they say “because God is there.” God is there through the compassion, love and the quality care they receive.

In the United States, there has been great fear linked to the COVID-19 pandemic – fear of infection and fear of passing infection to one’s unborn child. COVID-19 has had a devastating effect on the African American community, in particular.² According to The National Institute for Health Care Management Foundation, Black people are dying from COVID-19 at a rate 2.4 times higher than white people. This is due to higher rates of pre-existing health conditions, over-representation in frontline and essential worker jobs, unequal access to quality health care and insurance coverage and the greater likelihood of living in hyper-segregated neighborhoods. Systemic injustices impact minority communities in many detrimental ways, including the compromised heath of women and children.

Sometimes, even when quality services exist and people have access to them, they still might not be utilized. People may not be aware that they have treatable conditions because their illnesses have become “normal” or have a spiritual or contextual diagnosis. Annual bouts of malaria can just be part of life and HIV may be pronounced a spiritual malady or punishment. People may not realize how their avoidance of health care impacts others, like untreated tuberculosis and sexually transmitted infections, undiagnosed Ebola or COVID-19, hidden depression, alcoholism or anxiety. This calls for strengthening health education and the accompaniment of those with such conditions.

Some years ago, in Zambia, a young woman attending HIV awareness meetings conducted by a Global Ministries partner suddenly stood up and called for the group’s attention. She started by saying “I now know the witches who took my two daughters. Their names are HIV and AIDS!” She had never wanted to learn about the virus before because she had believed it was bewitchment. At the meeting, her mind and direction completely changed, and she went for testing and treatment. She now gives other women the testimony of her life – how she lost two daughters who were born HIV-positive because of her lack of knowledge, but that she now has a beautiful HIV-negative son.

Advocacy and funding for other foundational parts of our lives are also essential to personal, family and community health. For example, safe housing, clean drinking water, affordable fresh food, equal education and employment opportunities, affordable childcare and physical security improve the overall health of families and communities. Global Ministries has funded wells and latrines, small and large nutrition and agricultural projects, scholarships and livelihoods – all to address these underlying needs.

At the heart of The United Methodist Church’s Abundant Health Initiative is the desire to bring the best possible health services with the best possible outcomes to communities, and especially to women and children. Although beneficiaries are counted, the goal is not primarily reaching higher numbers. What’s important is offering quality health care with dignity and compassion, mostly to people who have been marginalized. Reaching them is an issue of Christian care and justice. We long for you to join us through your prayers, giving and by care for your community and the world.

Kathy Griffith is the Global Health team lead and program manager for Maternal, Newborn and Child Health.

¹https://www.who.int/bulletin/volumes/91/8/13-125450/en/
² https://www.nihcm.org/categories/systemic-racism-is-a-public-health-crisis

The post Health access and coverage: an issue of justice appeared first on Global Ministries.

The post Improving Health at Old Mutare Mission Hospital appeared first on Global Ministries.

By Judith Osongo Yanga
August 1, 2019 | OSIO, CONGO (UM News)

Osio is a village located more than 25 kilometers from Kisangani city. Each year for many years, the population of this village might travel thousands of kilometers to receive medical care.

Today, thanks to The United Methodist Church and the support of the Board of Global Ministries’ Abundant Health initiative, this population is enjoying having a modern health center in their village. The center has a 20-bed capacity with a quality staff designated by East Congo Bishop Gabriel Unda Yemba, and offers general medical treatment with plans to add a maternity ward.

The goal is to make quality care accessible to all and change the image of the medical structures within the East Congo Episcopal Area, said Dr. Damas Lushima, general coordinator of health for the episcopal area.

“It is important to build a modern maternity to continue to improve the health of the mother and child,” he added. “Abundant Health decided to build a health facility worthy of its name in the annual conference of the Equator and Oriental to alleviate some of the health problems that presents children and pregnant women in the rural Osio village.”

“I am happy to see the Methodist community thought about the health of the population that is under my jurisdiction here in Osio,” said Tshamunyonge Faustin, leader of the village.

In addition to upgrading the quality of care, the church helped improve the area infrastructure to increase access to a health center. Since there was no bridge nearby, crossing the Congo River to allow villagers to reach the university clinics or the large hospitals in Kisangani was an obstacle. They had to rely on canoes in an emergency.

The Oriental and Equator Conference covers a large geographic area, which also presents challenges to providing better health care access, said Albert Wembakoy, health supervisor for the conference.

“The need for well-constructed structures is as big as the conference itself because the majority of the members living in this conference are in rural areas,” he said. “It is a great joy to see the population being brought closer to the structures of quality care in our annual conference.”

The presence of the modern health center in Osio also aids in evangelization, said the Rev. Albert Onotamba, pastor of the local Albert Onotamba United Methodist Church that bears his name.

“We receive from time to time some people who today become effective members of our local church in Lubunga who testify to the service received at Osio health center,” Onotamba said. “The health center does not only receive The United Methodists but also, and above all, the non-Methodists who come to receive the proper care.”

“I pray that God will assist all the partners who think about the well-being of the people in the rural areas of our annual conference and our episcopal area,” said the Rev. Willy Alimasi, Kisangani 1 District Superintendent.

Osongo Yanga is the director of communications for the East Congo Episcopal Area of The United Methodist Church.

The post First health center opens in rural Congo village appeared first on Global Ministries.

United Methodist leaders added their voices to the World Health Organization’s warning that with the spread of Ebola to Goma, the outbreak is a public health emergency of international concern.

During his sermon at Majengo United Methodist Church on July 18, the Rev. Omole Owandjakoy, district superintendent of Goma, called on all households to avoid contact with anyone who is ill and to be diligent in washing their hands and observing other good hygiene practices.

He reported to the congregation about the first confirmed case of Ebola in Goma. The city of almost 2 million people is considered the gateway to the rest of the Democratic Republic of Congo and the world. More than 15,000 people cross the border from Goma to Rwanda every day.

Despite the efforts of The United Methodist Church to raise awareness about Ebola, the outbreak of the hemorrhagic fever has continued for nearly a year and has killed more than 1,700 people. According to the World Health Organization, roughly 2,500 documented cases have been reported, and this outbreak is the second worst on record. Beni is still the epicenter of the outbreak.

The worst Ebola outbreak took place between December 2013 and April 2016, and killed 11,310, mostly in Sierra Leone, Liberia and Guinea.

In Goma, at the Methodist Health Center in Majengo, several activities are already underway, including community-based surveillance with a triage area built by the Salvation Army Church of the Church of Christ in Congo / North Kivu.

Nurses were trained and are able to sort out suspected cases and then get patients transferred to the Ebola Treatment Center in Munigi, said Emery Lohandjola, nurse officer of the Goma Methodist Health Center.

Lohandjola said the case in Goma was quickly detected and isolated. The patient, a sick pastor who later died, arrived in Goma by bus from Butembo on July 16.

Messages have been broadcast on Goma’s national radio station for the past four months.

Young United Methodists in Goma have volunteered to educate the public on how to fight this disease.

Moise Mwango, president of the Youth in Kivu, is ready to raise awareness for people to get vaccinated and observe the basic hygienic conditions. He said Goma and Bukavu are two big cities of the Congo and “we cannot accept that the contamination of this virus continues because only Kivu Lake separate these two cities.”

The United Methodist Women of Goma pledged to raise awareness after a briefing and prayer day with the Goma District superintendent and the Rev. Amsini Omande Valentin of the Majengo United Methodist Church.

United Methodist women pledged to raise awareness of hygienic conditions and hand-washing in the Majendo neighborhood, including spreading the following messages:

• Wash your hands regularly.
• Keep a disinfectant gel with you and use it to protect yourself.
• Chlorinate your water to 0.05% or soap it to kill the virus on your hands.
• Avoid shaking hands and even kissing.

The women are determined to raise awareness in households, offices and elsewhere, said Okako Olela, president of United Methodist Women in Kivu.

Dr. Damas Lushima, general coordinator of health in East Congo, is worried about this spread of Ebola virus and promised to continue lobbying for major actions to raise awareness about prevention in the cities of Goma, Bukavu, Rutshuru, Uvira, Bunyakiri, Kisangani, Kindu and Uvira.

Bishop Gabriel Unda, leader of the Eastern Congo Episcopal Area, also called for action after learning of the confirmed case in Goma.

“I call for a general mobilization to block the road to this contamination of this deadly virus,” Unda said.

Kituka Lolonga is the Kivu Conference communicator.

News media contact: Vicki Brown, news editor, newsdesk@umcom.org or 615-742-5469.

The post United Methodists react to Ebola death in Goma appeared first on Global Ministries.