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Pilgrim Africa is proud to have collaborated in a pioneering effort as part of the Government of Uganda’s response to fight malaria among the most vulnerable, particularly women and children. We partnered with Uganda’s National Malaria Control Division (NMCD), Malaria Free Uganda (MFU), MP’s from Uganda’s Parliamentary Forum for Malaria, the Kampala City authority (KCCA), BenCity, and Ecobank in the first-ever public-private partnership to deliver a successful multi-sectoral urban mosquito control initiative in 5 slum areas in Kampala, which made national network evening news in Uganda.
Thanks to the persistent efforts of NMCD, MFU and our team, Pilgrim Africa was able to provide insecticide, personal protective equipment, and technical assistance and assessment to the ongoing spray project which targets the city’s slums, and the facilities surrounding them by spraying walls and surfaces where mosquitoes carrying malaria parasites often rest. Malaria Free Uganda and partners met the other costs of the campaign.
Thank you again to our supporters for challenging despair with us in the midst of the COVID crisis! Please pray for the safety of our team, and the people of Uganda.
Blessings,
The Pilgrim Team
We’ve just received a $23k grant to do remote education at Beacon of Hope School. A massive THANK YOU to The Allen Family Foundation for this game-changing grant! We can now purchase tablets and internet access for all 80 A-level candidate students and instructors for the 5 remaining months of the school year.
We will be providing IT support as well. This grant will allow our students to access online educational materials like their more advantaged peers in urban centers, and to study for their national exams. This grant truly levels the playing field.
The tablets will have an important “life beyond the pandemic”. The tablets will become property of the school, to be redistributed for use by next year’s incoming Senior 6 class. Our eventual hope is to provide tablets for IT instruction to the whole student body, as an essential part of preparing young women and men for the 21st century. We are thrilled to start with this year’s candidate class.
With only 58 cases reported so far, the entire nation of Uganda is on lockdown. Transport in any vehicle that is not government-sanctioned (including private cars and motorcycles) is forbidden, and several women in labor lost their lives in the last few weeks because they were unable to reach a hospital in time. Those who wish to keep food markets open must choose to sleep employees on site. As in many other countries, people have lost jobs and livelihoods in the economic slowdown caused by the lockdown.
But here, there is no health insurance, no paid leave, no unemployment to apply for, no food bank to go to, no individual subsidies, no loans to businesses, and a dwindling national food supply. Many Ugandans are in danger of not surviving the lockdown.
COVID-19 hasn’t killed anyone here yet. Malaria’s still the primary Grim Reaper. But Ugandans are no strangers to other deadly viruses, Ebola among them, which is part of why the response has been so swift. Internet is slow, strained and only available to a certain segment of society, mostly in urban centers. As a result there is not a lot of accurate information getting out to rural areas about COVID-19. Low levels of information lead to higher levels of fear.
Despite the challenges, we are not without hope. In fact, we know we need more than ever to do what we do: Love boldly, create catalytic change, and partner well. Here is what Pilgrim Africa is doing now to mitigate and address the effects of the COVID-19 crisis:
VHTs receiving their protective personal equipment
Right now, COVID isn’t killing anyone in Uganda. Malaria is. Our VHTs are already doing lifesaving work, and we are doing everything we can to ensure their safety and adapt to a new threat. We are also working to ensure that COVID-19 won’t be a deadly scourge in a Uganda under-equipped to meet the demand of care for critically ill patients.
We are working on other partnering initiatives as well to help the country in the current crisis, and will be updating you on these soon. For everyone in the world right now, coronavirus is changing all the rules and upsetting the status quo. In Uganda, there’s potential to manage those changes proactively and well to avoid great disaster. We are focusing on what Pilgrim Africa does best: fostering hope by creating a local and actionable, if ambitious and visionary, plan for a sustainable, prosperous healthy future.
Stay safe, and love boldly.
In Uganda, the number of children in attendance drastically plummets from primary to secondary school. Census data from 2004 indicates that for every ten students in primary schools, only one is enrolled in secondary schools. Pilgrim Africa has assumed a comprehensive approach in our mission to remedy this: our malaria research, clinics, and scholarships work together to circumvent the challenges of poverty and sickness that prevent most Ugandan children from their education.
Most recently, Pilgrim Africa has adopted another approach to fulfill this mission—the Annex Renovations. These renovations are seeing abandoned and derelict buildings transformed into fully furnished classrooms, dormitories, latrines, and kitchen spaces.
Our vision of sustainability is infused throughout these renovations as we have implemented solar panels with back-up battery charging systems, and a rainwater catchment tank (which is already filled with fresh water from the seasonal rains).
Though final renovations are still ongoing, the dormitories were opened to the students in September. This was a joyous and exciting event for them since, compared to their previous overcrowded dorms, these new dorms provided them with spacious living quarters and healthier living conditions. A houseparent also expressed his enthusiasm that the children “would finally have access to reliable light and decent bathrooms.”
On the left below, you’ll see the old dormitories, and pictured on the right below are the new bed frames in the new dormitory on the Annex property.
These dorms also increase our school’s enrollment capacity. The dorms currently house 154 of our 658 students, but next year they will be able to house 300 extra students—that’s 300 more Ugandan children receiving an education year over year!
The Annex Renovations serves as an example of Pilgrim Africa’s dedication to Uganda’s children and as a reminder that anything can be given new life and transformed into something meaningful and instrumental.
THANK YOU to The Zarmada Giving Fund for making these renovations possible!
There has been a huge upsurge in malaria across Uganda in the last month or so, and in the last week the rapid rise in deaths and cases of malaria have made world news. Katakwi is blessed to be at a relatively low level of malaria because of the interventions conducted under the Katakwi Rotary Malaria Project, but upsurges across the country can rapidly impact populations who have recently gotten malaria under control.
More than one million people have been infected with malaria in Uganda in the past two months, and since last year, deaths from severe malaria are up 250%.
“The health ministry has attributed the rapid rise partly to climate change, with the disease now appearing in regions that were previously malaria-free thanks to a mild climate.
The government said there had also been a reduction in use of mosquito bed-nets, as those distributed in 2017 had begun to age.” BBC News, August 2019
It’s upsetting, coming on the heels of a really spectacular Uganda Malaria Indicator Survey conducted in November of 2018, which showed that country prevalence had dropped below 9% — a drop of over 50% since the survey in 2014.
We must not lose the progress that’s been made!
In Pilgrim Africa’s project area, all village health team members (VHTs) received medicines and mobile phones this week, and are busy protecting fellow community members by testing and treating them for malaria on a regular basis. The VHTs have also recently distributed nets treated with novel effective insecticides. These bed nets are critical in making sure people are safe from the ongoing onslaught of mosquitoes.
Pictured: VHTs receiving their boxes of medical supplies and new bikes.
But not all families in Uganda are as well protected as the families in Katakwi. Along with other malaria partners in Uganda, we’ve been asked to help at a national level, to provide both nets and spraying where needed. Our ability to respond to this upsurge depends upon your generous support.
Your prayers are desired — and your help — are needed and appreciated!
Let’s stop this resurgence before it destroys Uganda’s fragile gains — and her people.
“Let us not become weary in doing good, for at the proper time we will reap a harvest if we do not give up.”
~ Galatians 6:9