Last week marked the halfway point for achieving the eight Millennium Development Goals set in 2000 by the international community. One of the goals is the eradication of deaths from malaria, which kills about a million people each year, mostly children under the age of 5. Although we're only beginning our fight against malaria, we've made much progress toward putting together a worldwide effort worthy of this foe. A big weapon in this fight is the people who come together in churches, synagogues, and mosques. Such faith communities have played a vital role in awakening the conscience of the world to global poverty and the fight against malaria. All over the world people of faith have signed petitions, marched and argued for action. As the former British prime minister, I can bear witness to the efficacy of their campaign.
Their call to action was insistent yet reasonably expressed; determined yet pursued with calm conviction. It was heard, and resulted in real commitments educating people about preventive measures. But unless we now step up the level of delivery on those commitments, the eradication of malaria and other Millennium Development Goals will not be met. Going forward, faith communities will be essential to the success of the malaria campaign. What began as a 19th-century mission to spread the Christian faith in sub-Saharan Africa can be reborn as a 21st-century mission to save lives, and show what true faith in action can achieve.
It is a simple matter to prevent malaria with bed nets and medicines. Wherever and whenever they're used they save lives. And people know they need them. When I was recording a short video for the campaign, the cameraman, who had just returned from Africa, told me that the village people were polite and friendly. Then when he brought out the nets for them to be filmed, they fell upon him, desperate to have them, mothers and fathers realizing that this might be their only chance to save the lives of their loved ones.
These are people we never see; their faces and lives are hidden from us. But imagine they are part of our immediate community. Wouldn't we regard it as utterly obscene if for $5 we could save their lives and then didn't?
For many reasons, African governments, with the best will in the world, find it difficult to bring adequate health care to more than 50 to 60 percent of their populations. Faith communities have the best access to the poorest, the least educated, those living off the beaten track in poor rural areas. Because religious leaders are regarded as trusted authority figures, they can pass on health messages to people unreachable by governments.
That's why I am convinced that if more faith communities trained primary health-care workers, they would make a huge contribution, provided they had adequate drugs and knowledge, and were plugged into national health plans.
Faith communities around the world have already done a great deal for the Millennium Development Goals in the past eight years. Their advocacy for change has encouraged and pushed governments forward. Their work in education and health, particularly in Africa, often unpublicized and unrecorded, has been an invaluable complement to government programs. The response of the faith communities to the HIV/AIDS epidemic has been widely recognized and has stimulated the growth of new and effective interfaith networks.
A core part of my vision for the Tony Blair Faith Foundation is that the achievement of the Millennium Development Goals depends not just on governments but also on the dedicated work of people of faith. Progress will often be best achieved by interfaith collaboration, more-effective networks and learning from good examples. Christian, Muslim, Jew, Hindu, Buddhist, Sikh and all the members of mainstream faiths believe in the duty to help those in suffering and need. Ambitious national malaria plans are likely to fall short of their targets if the faith communities, mosques, churches, temples are not integrated into their delivery. This is quite a challenge.
The work of the Anglican Church in creating "health deacons" and doing excellent work in Africa shows it can be done. Some mosques, churches and temples distribute bed nets and teach people how to use them. Rick Warren of the U.S. evangelical Saddleback Church is doing this in Rwanda with local churches, training trainers for primary health care. Sister Felicia Muoneke, a Medical Missionary of Mary in St. Matthew's parish, Amuko Lagos, one of the poorest slums of Nigeria's capital, runs a clinic and health center. Although most Muslim and Christian children it treats have malaria symptoms, none dies from the disease thanks to treatment with antimalarials. People, plagued by mosquitoes from a stagnant canal, need nets treated with insecticide.
The achievement of the Millennium Development Goals in our generation could be remembered as something like the moral equivalent of the 19th-century elimination of the slave trade. To achieve that, the campaign will need to be part of a vastly wider coalition of forces than even William Wilberforce could muster. Today it is no longer an option for faith communities to work together. It has become a necessity. The time is now.
To find out more about Tony Blair's campaign against malaria, go to tonyblairfaithfoundation.org .