Every year, 150 million people, mostly from the developing world, suffer from the mosquito-borne malaria disease. On top of this, 438,000 individuals die because of this disease—80 percent of whom are children 5 years old and below.
A Christian group based in Oklahoma is trying to save lives from this life-threatening disease, and demonstrating God's love to others in the process.
Blessing International, a humanitarian organisation dedicated to alleviating human needs, has been leading efforts to provide quality and affordable medicine so that patients suffering from malaria will be able to effectively fight the disease.
Barry Ewy, the chief executive officer of Blessings International, said many lives can be saved if malaria patients from poor countries are given access to medicine.
"One of the frustrating things for those of us who are working in this area is that it's preventable," Ewy told Mission Network News.
"We've seen prevention in the United States that has worked very well. But unfortunately many developing nations don't have the infrastructure that's necessary to both deal with and prevent malaria," he added.
He explained that although malaria medicines are relatively affordable, some patients die because their wages are not enough to pay for these medicines.
"For example, chloroquine tablets–for a full treatment for an adult–are only somewhere around a dollar and a half. Very reasonable," Ewy said. "But if you are living in a developing nation, a dollar is a day's wages. That can certainly be difficult for those people to be able to obtain."
This year, as part of the observance of World Malaria Day on April 25, Blessings International is teaming up with the group Kairos 10, which sells jewellery handmade by African artisans and pours.
For every piece of jewellery sold by Kairos 10 this April and May, a portion of the proceeds will be donated to Blessings International, which will buy medicine and mosquito nets to prevent more malaria deaths.
"We are able to purchase medicine on the international market, and we are able to source that directly from the manufacturer. So we are able to control both the amount that we receive, as well as the quality of the product we receive," Ewy explained. "With that we are able to receive it at a very discounted price and able to pass that along to the teams that are traveling."
The Blessings International head explained that his group's ultimate goal is to spread Jesus' love to others.
"Blessings was founded on the belief that we want to share the love and compassion of Jesus Christ throughout the world. So we do that through having supplies and medicine available to teams that are traveling," he said.
