United Methodists Receive $5 Million To Help End Child Malaria Deaths

FORIMMEDIATE RELEASE

April 25, 2008

Contact: Diane Denton
(615) 742-5406 (office)
(615) 483-1765 (cell)

FORT WORTH: As it commemorates World Malaria Day, The United Methodist Church announced today it will receive a $5 million grant from the United Nations Foundation, with support from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, to help eliminate malaria and other diseases of poverty.

Bishop Thomas Bickerton revealed the grant at the United Methodist General Conference, the denomination's top legislative body meeting in Fort Worth through May 2.

"We hope to use this $5 million to support a fundraising and educational campaign to help end deaths of children from malaria.The goal is to raise $100 million over the next several years for programs in Africa to fight malaria, HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis and to support the Global Fund," said Bickerton.

The United Methodist Church is embarking on a global health initiative aimed at combating diseases of poverty. The denomination has recently entered into an expanded partnership with the United Nations Foundation to help end malaria deaths.

"The United Nations Foundation's Malaria Partnership is proud to be working with The United Methodist Church to help eliminate malaria deaths," said Elizabeth McKee Gore, executive director of partnership alliances at the UN Foundation."The church's 11.5 million members have already been sending anti-malaria nets and saving lives through the Nothing But Nets campaign. We are looking forward to continuing to fight malaria through the Malaria Partnership."

The people of The United Methodist Church are founding partners in Nothing But Nets, a campaign to prevent malaria by sending life-saving insecticide-treated mosquito nets to children and families in Africa.More than $18 million has been raised to date and more than 700,000 nets have already been delivered to families in Africa.

Earlier this week, Bickerton joined philanthropist Ted Turner, sports columnist Rick Reilly, NBA Commissioner David Stern, and a host of religious, civic and business leaders representing more than 25 million people around the world to announce organizational commitments to end malaria, a disease that kills more than 1.3 million people each year.

Bickerton said the General Conference will be invited to affirm the campaign on behalf of the church during the ten-day meeting.

About General Conference 2008
General Conference is the top policy-making body of The United Methodist Church which meets once every four years. The conference can revise church law, as well as adopt resolutions on current moral, social, public policy and economic issues. It also approves plans and budgets for church-wide programs for the next four years. The 2008 meeting will take place April 23-May 2 at the Fort Worth Convention Center.

The UN Foundation Malaria Partnership combines the expertise of Roll Back Malaria and the Nothing But Nets campaign with the dedication and reach of The United Methodist Church and the Lutheran World Relief to grow a constituency engaged in helping solve global health challenges, beginning with malaria.This education, mobilization and fundraising campaign in partnership with the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria is a major capital campaign dedicated to supporting Roll Back Malaria's goals to deliver more than $2.2 billion (each year thru 2015) to prevention, treatment and research efforts, primarily in Africa.