Todd Jennings from PATH continues to send in daily updates about World Malaria Day from Zambia.

The impact of malaria goes beyond the chills and the sweating, the dizziness and even death. It devastates families, communities, economies. Take a world map showing where malaria is common and overlay it on one showing the world’s poorest regions: it’s the same really, a wide belt of suffering around the equator.

One figure heard often is that Africa loses more than 12 billion dollars each year due to malaria. I don’t know how that was calculated, but I do know that the disease shackles growth and development. If your child is sick from malaria, she isn’t attending school, and a parent must miss work to care for her. From a parasite delivered by a mosquito, a family bears a loss in education, work and income.

Peter Chintu will never forget January 13th, 1997. He came home from traveling to find his four-year-old son, Abraham, not feeling well. Peter knew it was serious so he slung his son on his back with fabric and bicycled to the hospital in Mazabuka, about seven miles away. In a few hours Abraham was dead.

At 45 years of age, Peter is now the elder statesman in the 2008 Zambia Race Against Malaria from Serenje Livingstone. He is committed to sharing his experience with others so they and their families will protect themselves from the disease. Peter can recite the measures by heart: sleep under a treated bednet every night, allow your home to be sprayed, seek immediate diagnosis and treatment if you have the symptoms of malaria (fever, chills, sweating, loss of appetite…) He sat down with me in Lusaka after today’s grueling 122-mile ride (only 300 miles to go!). In this audio clip, he describes the cruel intersection of malaria and poverty.

-Todd Jennings, Advocacy Officer, Malaria Control and Evaluation Partnership in Africa (MACEPA), a program at PATH, Lusaka, Zambia. Photo credit: Jesper Lublinkhof.

While visiting Zambia recently, I was reminded that extreme poverty is not just numbers and statistics. It lives in real people and has a life of its own. I was part of a group that was visiting a project that helps care for orphans and ensure that they receive education. In seeing this project, I was faced with the reality that I live in a world where I was fortunate enough to obtain a graduate education and as a result, provide for my family (my only daughter has just started college). I kept thinking that mothers around the world deserve similar opportunities.

During my trip, I met a lovely young boy named Armand. Armand, his little sister, his big brother and his three cousins live in a cramped, one room home that has neither running water nor electricity. He was smiling with his sister by the time I met him, a smile brighter than I had ever seen. Unfortunately, due to school fees, Armand doesn’t know whether or not he will be able to go to school as expected next term. This bright bubbly boy is just one of the many people, women and children that daily face life and death struggles, and lack of opportunity.

In a land faced with 78% unemployment, where 87% of the population lives on less than $2 per day, and life expectancy hovers around 38-years old, change is essential. The scriptures state that to whom much is given, much is required. As a person living in a nation that has been so richly blessed, I don’t see how we can sit idly by while neighbors literally fight for their lives? We must use our platform and speak out! Anything else is unacceptable. The ONE Campaign, and each member’s decision to take action, will ensure that Armand and others like him will have the opportunity to become all they were created to be.

The need is urgent and the stakes are high. The stakes are, literally, life itself. What will you do with all you have received? Take Action!

-Tatia Gibbons, mother and ONE Member, Oak Park, Illinois