by UrbanFaith Staff | Oct 17, 2014 | Feature, Headline News |
MONROVIA, Liberia (RNS) Ever since Frank Mulbah’s mother died of Ebola in August, no one will go near him.
“I went to my relatives after my mother died, but they chased me away, even after I told them that I didn’t have Ebola,” said Frank, 12, who tested negative for Ebola at the hospital where his mother died.
As Ebola continues its rampage across Liberia and elsewhere in West Africa, thousands of children are taking a double hit: losing parents to the fatal virus and then being shunned by relatives who fear they will catch the disease.
The United Nations estimates the virus has orphaned nearly 4,000 children across the region, and that number could double in coming weeks. Aid groups, such as Doctors Without Borders, fear the orphans are at risk of starvation and disease.
The children also could pose a risk to others by spreading the disease if they are allowed to roam free without being tested for the virus.
Most children orphaned by Ebola are tested and found to be free of the virus, said Laurence Sailly, a coordinator of an Ebola Treatment Center here run by Doctors Without Borders. But some are not tested.
“These children are supposed to be quarantined for 21 days before they are declared Ebola-free,” she said. “But this does not take place because there’s not enough facilities to cater to these children.”
In Liberia, the hardest hit country, with nearly 1,000 deaths from Ebola as of last week, about half of all mothers in the country are raising their children alone because thousands of men died in a 1999-2003 civil war. So when these mothers catch Ebola and die, their children have nowhere to turn.
Frank, whose father died in the civil war, said he found no one to care for him — neither in northwest Liberia, where he lived before dropping out of school, nor here in the capital, where he traveled in a desperate search for food and shelter from relatives who refused to take him in.
So he scavenges for food. “A day can pass without eating anything,” Frank said. “A few people will listen to you and give you food to eat, but the majority will chase you away.”
Some residents said they are sympathetic to the plight of orphans like Frank, but they have to first look out for the safety of their own families.
Faith Teta, 33, a mother of four, watched as two neighbors died a few months ago from Ebola, leaving behind five children. Their youngest child died a short time later, because everyone in the neighborhood was too scared of being infected to care for the 1-year-old, she said.
The remaining four children now wander Monrovia’s streets, dependent on the kindness of strangers, which is in short supply, Teta said. More often, the children encounter fear, horror and even death threats.
“As parents, we all want to help them,” Teta said, “but people are endangering their own lives when they take in these children, and the lives of our family members.”
Teta blamed the government for being slow to respond to the disease and implement preventive measures to stem it. “The public didn’t have any information about Ebola,” she said. “The government should take responsibility for its failure to stop this and help these kids.”
Sailly said the majority of people dying from the Ebola outbreak are ages 25 to 45, and have children 12 or younger.
“These children are now forced to drop out of school and work (to survive),” Sailly said. “It’s very painful to see them roaming in streets in search for food as their sole caregivers have already died.”
ChildFund, an international charity, started taking care of Ebola orphans this month by keeping them isolated for 21 days.
“The government should support such centers so that they can be able to provide a protective environment for these children,” said Sailly.
Frank hopes his relatives will change their minds, but he isn’t hopeful. He tries not to think about getting home-cooked meals or an education.
“I don’t know when I’ll go back to school,” he said. “Right now I’m just looking for food and a place to live.”
(Sheilia Passewe writes for USA Today.)
Copyright 2014 Religion News Service. All rights reserved. No part of this transmission may be reproduced without written permission.
by UrbanFaith Staff | Oct 9, 2014 | Feature, Headline News |
c. 2014 USA Today
(RNS) There have been 8,033 confirmed or suspected cases of Ebola and more than 3,879 deaths attributed to the current outbreak in West Africa, the World Health Organization reports.
The first man to be diagnosed with Ebola in the USA died Wednesday (Oct. 7).
Aid workers are providing everything from medical care to protective gear to education as the Ebola virus continues to spread.
How can you help?
The following is a list of organizations responding to the Ebola outbreak on the ground. All of the charities listed have received three- and four-star ratings from Charity Navigator:
UNICEF
In addition to providing supplies, UNICEF has launched a campaign to tell people about how Ebola is transmitted and how it can be prevented.
About 400 UNICEF staffers are working on the ground in West Africa . Communication is largely done door-to-door.
UNICEF estimates it needs $200 million in funding for its immediate Ebola response efforts. So far, the organization has raised more than $40 million, said Caryl Stern, president of the U.S. Fund for UNICEF.
“The main thing we need right now are dollars,” she said. “Many times, people say, ‘I want to send shoes or coats.’ But the cost of getting something there is more expensive than sourcing it more locally.”
Operation Blessing International
One of the top needs in the Ebola response? Chlorine.
The non-profit sent five chlorine generators to Liberia for hand washing and to disinfect surfaces, producing about 440 gallons of chlorine a day, said Bill Horan, president of Operation Blessing.
“Soap and water is better than nothing, but chlorine and water is what will kill the virus and stop the spread of Ebola,” Horan said.
Operation Blessing staff and volunteers are distributing chlorine to the Liberian government and directly to residents, he said.
The non-profit is shipping another generator later this month, this one with the capability of producing 640 gallons of chlorine a day, Horan said.
International Medical Corps
IMC operates a 70-bed Ebola treatment facility in Liberia and is opening a 50-bed facility in Sierra Leone by month’s end, said Margaret Aguirre, head of global initiatives for the organization.
These facilities are expensive to run. The Liberia center costs $1 million per month and requires 200 staffers when the facility is at full capacity, Aguirre said.
In addition to doctors and nurses, IMC is deploying water and sanitation experts, she said.
The organization currently has about 300 staffers in West Africa and is sending hundreds more to help in response efforts, Aguirre said.
Save the Children
Save the Children has health ministries in Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea. The non-profit has trained health workers and community members about how to limit their risks, according to its website.
Doctors Without Borders
The organization has sent more than 3,000 staff working in the region, according to an e-mail from Tim Shenk, spokesman for the organization.
Doctors Without Borders runs six Ebola management centers with more than 600 hospital beds in isolation, according to Shenk’s e-mail.
(Jolie Lee writes for USA Today. Follow her on Twitter at @JolieLeeDC.)
Copyright 2014 Religion News Service. All rights reserved. No part of this transmission may be reproduced without written permission.
by UrbanFaith Staff | Oct 7, 2014 | Feature, Headline News |
c. 2014 Religion News Service
A delegation of Lutheran Church leaders in Africa look at the drying corpse of a cow in the Kajiado area of southeastern Kenya. Climate change is causing serious and frequent droughts that decimate livestock in Africa’s rural areas. Religion News Service (Photo Credit: Fredrick Nzwili)
NAIROBI, Kenya (RNS) As climate change devastates communities in Kenya, church leaders are helping to address the crisis locally while also calling on industrialized nations to own up to their responsibilities for spewing greenhouse gas emissions into the atmosphere.
“I think they (industrialized nations) are responsible for most of the emissions,” said Peter Solomon Gichira, the climate change program officer at the All Africa Conference of Churches. “They have responsibility to support climate change adaptation and mitigation as a moral obligation.”
“But we (in Africa) also have a role to play because we have not been very good stewards of the environment,” added Gichira, a poverty and development expert.
People living in the Global South such as Kenya are suffering the worst consequences, climate experts say.
Droughts have become more severe and recurrent and are frequently followed by excessive rains or floods. Temperatures are much higher and weather patterns are now unpredictable.
In conferences, church leaders and officials have heard from experts that greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide from industrial plants trap heat, slowing or preventing it from being lost in space.
“We need enhanced adaptive capacity in partnership with the nations,” said the Rev. Patrick Maina, a conservationist with the Presbyterian Church of East Africa.
Maina runs a massive tree planting project on church compounds and members’ farms in his presbytery in the Great Rift Valley area. He also gives talks on climate change.
Recently, Maina and other church leaders have stepped up efforts to help communities cope with the crisis.
In eastern Kenya, villagers are constructing structures known as sand dams with support from the Mennonite Central Committee. Working through the Utooni Development Organization, a self-help group, villagers in the largely Christian Utooni area are building large concrete walls across a dry riverbed, stopping or slowing down the rapid flow of rainwater to the Indian Ocean.
The simple structures — 231 have been built since 2009 — store water under the riverbed, so it can be used for irrigation, tree planting and domestic consumption throughout the year. With 50 sand dams constructed each year, the area is much cooler and better to live in, according to Esther Mbolu, a resident of Utooni.
Selena McCoy Carpenter, Kenya representative with the Mennonite Central Committee, said some people who did not have water can now access it and others who could not grow food are now capable of farming.
“By providing basic needs, we are showing God’s compassion,” she said.
On the slopes of Mount Kenya, Trade Craft East Africa, a nongovernmental organization and the Christian Community Services of Mount Kenya East, a development agency in five Anglican dioceses, are helping small-scale farmers adapt to climate change through use of both modern and traditional weather forecasting methods.
Farmers predict weather by using indigenous practices such as watching flying dragonflies, low-swooping swallows or flowering acacia trees.
But with weather patterns becoming unpredictable, farmers have been adding scientific forecasts delivered by meteorologists to determine when or what crops to plant.
“This is resulting in good harvest,” said Eston Njuki, a program officer at British-based Christian Aid, which funded the project with the Anglican Diocese of Mbeere. “The farmers are able to beat or reduce the threat of climate change.”
Copyright 2014 Religion News Service. All rights reserved. No part of this transmission may be reproduced without written permission.
by Nicole Symmonds, Urban Faith Contributing Writer | Oct 1, 2014 | Feature, Headline News |
OWN Network has brought us self-help from Iyanla Vanzant via her show “Iyanla Fix My Life;” life lessons from some of today’s most influential celebrities and public figures such as the late Maya Angelou, Whoopi Goldberg, Cicely Tyson via Oprah’s Master Class; and now the network brings us “Help Desk” via, you guessed it, a desk. On this new series journalist Gotham Chopra, the son of Deepak Chopra, hosts and introduces some of the world’s top “thought leaders” to everyday people in order to help answer the heavy-hitting questions of life. In a recent episode DeVon Franklin, the Hollywood producer and Seventh-Day Adventist pastor who married actress Meagan Good took a seat at the Help Desk to help a young woman who desires to abstain from sex until marriage.
28-year-old Fallon has been with her boyfriend for six months and they are sexually active, but she realizes that she now wants to abstain from sex in their relationship. She sees this move as trying something new since, in all of her previous relationships, she never abstained from sex. Therefore her question to Franklin is how she should broach the topic with her boyfriend and journey toward abstinence after time as a sexually-active person. Well she came to the right person. Franklin and Good pledged to abstinence until marriage and the couple is working on a book entitled “The Wait” about how they kept that pledge during their courtship. Thus Franklin rose to the occasion and offered Fallon some tactical suggestions and words of encouragement based on his experience. Watch the video to see what he says.
Do you agree with his advice? What might you add or subtract?
Catch Help Desk on the OWN Network every Sunday at 12PM EST.
by UrbanFaith Staff | Sep 23, 2014 | Feature, Headline News |
NAIROBI, Kenya (RNS) Church leaders in West Africa are raising concerns over sporadic violence that has killed one of their own and frustrated efforts to stem the Ebola epidemic.
The violence took a dangerous turn last week in a remote village in southeast Guinea, when fearful villagers killed eight members of a disinfection and awareness team, including an evangelical church pastor.
The Rev. Moise Mamy, was a member of the Water of Life Ebola awareness team, a relief wing of the Christian and Missionary Alliance. He headed the Hope Clinic, a facility providing medical and surgical services in the remote village of Womey.
The villagers used machetes and rocks to kill the eight and later dumped their bodies in a septic tank at a local primary school, according to news reports. The murders have sparked outrage within the aid and church communities in West Africa, where superstition and myths prevail.
“The people were on a humanitarian mission,” said the Rev. Tolbert Thomas Jallah Jr., general secretary of the Fellowship of Christian Councils and Churches in West Africa. “They were trying to assist under a very difficult situation. Their killings and the violence are totally unacceptable.”
In Womey and its surroundings, some people refuse to acknowledge the existence of Ebola and accuse the health officials of intentionally infecting the populations. Information on Ebola eradication efforts are viewed suspiciously as Western propaganda and distribution of chlorine-based products are rejected as attempts to destroy villages.
This mistrust exists beyond Guinea, church officials say, and has resulted in periodic violence and protests in areas where governments have attempted to isolate those infected by the virus.
The World Health Organization said Thursday (Sept. 18) many of the estimated 700 new infections are in Liberia, but the situation remains dire in Sierra Leone and Guinea. Nigeria, Senegal and Democratic Republic of Congo have recorded some cases.
Jallah said the epidemic was destroying economies, disrupting markets and farming. He warned it was a matter of time before serious food shortages hit the region.
“This really is a difficult situation,” he said.
Recently, several airlines stopped flying to the West African countries raising concerns among relief organizations and churches that medical supplies and equipment will not reach those affected.
“We passionately plead with airlines to resume flights to our affected countries to help us fight Ebola,” said Ebun James-Dekam, general secretary of the Council of Churches in Sierra Leone.
Church leaders welcomed the recent announcement of 3,000 U.S troops to fight the epidemic in Liberia.
Copyright 2014 Religion News Service. All rights reserved. No part of this transmission may be reproduced without written permission.
by UrbanFaith Staff | Sep 4, 2014 | Feature, Headline News |
c. 2014 Religion News Service
NAIROBI, KENYA (RNS) Five months after Boko Haram abducted more than 200 girls in Nigeria’s Borno State, the Islamic extremist group has begun occupying churches in the country’s northeastern region, church officials there said.
The militant group, which church leaders and analysts view as an African variation of the Islamic State, is also beheading men, forcing Christian women to convert to Islam and taking them as wives, officials said.
“Things are getting pretty bad,” said the Rev. John Bakeni, the secretary of the Maiduguri Roman Catholic diocese in northeastern Nigeria. “A good number of our parishes in Pulka and Madagali areas have been overrun in the last few days.”
The militants have turned the church compound and rectory of the St. Denis Parish in Madagali town into their base, the priest said. The militants overran the church center on Aug. 23.
“The priest in charge managed to escape, but they took his car and important church documents,” said Bakeni.
“Many civilians are now on the run,” he added. “Many others are being trapped and killed. Life means nothing here. It’s so cheap and valueless.”
In 2009, the group launched its first military operation in Maiduguri, advocating for a strict form of Shariah. Since then, it has attacked churches, villages, government installations and public places across north and northeastern Nigeria.
It has also carried out mass kidnappings in the region and is still holding captive more than 200 girls it grabbed from a local school in Chibok. The girls were kidnapped on April 14.
After seizing the Borno State town of Gwoza from government forces last month, the group’s leader, Abubakar Shekau, announced an Islamic caliphate.
Church officials say a thin line divides Boko Haram and the Islamic State.
“The same ideology runs through their methods and disposition,” said Bakeni.
With the rise of Boko Haram, scholars say Islamic extremism threatens Africa as much as it does the Middle East, the Arabian Peninsula, Pakistan and Afghanistan.
“Boko Haram bears an inmate family resemblance to developments elsewhere in the Muslim world,” wrote Charles Villa-Vicencio, a South African theologian and a visiting professor in the Conflict Resolution Program at Georgetown University, in the July/August edition of the Horn of Africa Bulletin. “ … Resilient Muslims are engaged in a fight–back against the western influence.”
Copyright 2014 Religion News Service. All rights reserved. No part of this transmission may be reproduced without written permission.
