Would You Save a Child’s Life for $1?

Rainy Season Worsens Malaria Onslaught

Baby Rose was 20 months old and surviving in a refugee camp with her mother when a cursory medical checkup found her to be feverish. Soon it was discovered she had become infected with malaria.

It’s not uncommon to contract malaria in a refugee camp, where few people have protection or medicine on hand to prevent its onset. But left untreated, malaria can be deadly.

With her early diagnosis, Baby Rose was one of the fortunate ones. Early treatment is critical. Baby Rose received antimalarial medication and survived.

Malaria is the leading killer of children under age five across Africa

Many children in South Sudan are not as fortunate. One medical study showed the average survival rate for children with malaria is three days. Just three days. Once the illness has progressed from mild to severe, a child can die within 24 hours. 

But you can save a child’s life with a malaria tablet for about $1.

Malaria Facts in South Sudan

Sleeping and protected. Mosquito nets help keep babies safe from infection.

It’s hard to imagine that a disease which can be so effectively treated is still taking innocent lives on a daily basis.

In one year alone, an astonishing 2.8 million children were infected with malaria in South Sudan. It is astonishing because inexpensive antimalarial medicine and simple resources like mosquito nets can make all the difference to change those statistics.

When Illness Rains

Beginning in April and lasting through November, South Sudan’s annual rains come. The rains turn dirt roads into mud bogs. Roads become impassable. Communities are isolated for months.

The rainy season can be a blessing or a curse. The rains aid in the healthy growth of crops and preventing drought. But they also worsen the spread of malaria, carried by mosquitoes that proliferate by multiplying in standing water. As the rains increase, so do the number of victims who fall to the insidious infection of malaria.

The sickness is spread to humans from a parasite that infects a female mosquito. Around 10 to 15 days after being bitten by an infected mosquito, a child will develop early symptoms like headache, fatigue, fever, and chills.

Early treatment is critical once a child has received a bite from an infected mosquito

As malaria progresses, the child may look jaundiced, have difficulty breathing, exhibit bloody urine, and spiral downward into convulsions and impaired consciousness.

Malaria conditions are endemic to approximately 95 percent of South Sudan, leaving 11 million people at risk across the county.

But a child can be cured with a simple medicine that comes in a chewable tablet like a baby aspirin. If given early enough, a sick child can fully recover within two weeks. The medicine costs about $1 per dose.

That’s the cost to save a child from dying of this preventable disease.

Malaria can escalate from fever to coma and organ failure in just 3 days

Mosquito Nets – An Ounce of Prevention

A recent study involving 56 million insecticide-treated mosquito nets distributed across malaria-endemic regions showed their use reduced both mosquito exposure and risk of infection. The project estimates the nets helped prevent 13 million cases of malaria and saved close to 25,000 lives. Sudan Relief Fund has previously distributed mosquito nets to affected areas, and will continue to do so as part of a comprehensive battle against malaria.

With the coming rainy season and the drastic increase in the malaria threat, it’s a critical time to provide resources that can stop malaria deaths.

Children in South Sudan and in Sudan’s Nuba Mountains have already been impacted by a food shortage and famine for months. Malnourishment makes a child far more vulnerable to the devastating effects of malaria. In an immune compromised body, the sickness can quickly progress into coma and organ failure, sometimes within only 24 hours.

Cases of malaria skyrocket during the rainy season, when legions of mosquitos breed

A Race Against Time

But this doesn’t have to happen. By delivering inexpensive malaria tablets, you can ensure early treatment and help save many children’s lives this year.

Help Fight Malaria & Save Children

The organization, Doctors Without Borders, said since last September they’ve seen more than double the number of pediatric malaria cases over the same time last year, representing a “cause for serious concern.”

Every year the organization reports a surge in malaria cases during the rainy season. However, South Sudan’s flooding has worsened the outbreak. “These are terrible statistics,” said one doctor. “It should not be the case that so many children are ending up in the hospital with advanced forms of malaria when it can be so easily be treated…”

An inexpensive malaria tablet can keep her safe, if she just has access to it

In South Sudan there is no health insurance, no government sponsored health care. If a mother of a sick child doesn’t live near a clinic that has malaria medicine in stock, or if the mother can’t afford to buy it, she has nowhere else to go for help.

This inexpensive medicine saves children’s lives. Please partner with us to make that happen for more little ones like Baby Rose. A child’s life is priceless. But for the price of less than one US dollar, children can be spared from dying needlessly of malaria, a completely preventable tragedy – if they just have the help they need.

Sincerely,

Neil A. Corkery President