Be part of the solution: help end malaria for good

International (MNN) — If you could help stop a disease that kills 438,000 people a year and keeps 150 million more too sick to work, wouldn’t you want to do that?

Thanks to Blessings International, you can help “End malaria for good” as part of World Malaria Day on April 25.

Blessings International is a mission an organization based in Tulsa, Oklahoma, that provides quality, affordable medicine for mission teams showing and sharing the love of Jesus Christ in the U.S. and around the world. They are partnering with another Tulsa-based group, Kairos 10, to put a big dent in the number of people suffering from the disease.

Almost half the world’s population lives in areas at risk for malaria, which is a mosquito-borne illness. The costs of treatment keep poor families trapped in a cycle of illness and poverty.

The good news is that Blessings International can provide free malaria treatments for people in need because of a partnership with Kairos 10.

Kairos 10 sells jewelry handmade by African artisans and pours proceeds of their sales into the fight against malaria. For each bracelet Kairos 10 sells in April and May as part of this campaign, Blessings International will donate a full dose of malaria medicine and a treated anti-mosquito bed net.

Blessings International’s unique mission is to provide much-needed medicines for mission teams at costs well below the market price, says the group’s CEO, Barry Ewy.

“We are able to purchase medicine on the international market, and we are able to source that directly from the manufacturer. So we are able to control both the amount that we receive, as well as the quality of the product we receive,” Ewy says. “With that we are able to receive it at a very discounted price and able to pass that along to the teams that are traveling.”

In 2015, Blessings International was able to assist almost 3,000 teams that went to 99 different countries, as well as working in the United States.

“Blessings was founded on the belief that we want to share the love and compassion of Jesus Christ throughout the world,” Ewy says. “So we do that through having supplies and medicine available to teams that are traveling.”

But Blessings International also provides other items mission teams can use to meet needs and open Gospel conversations, Ewy explains.

“Unique things like reading glasses, coloring books–issues that you wouldn’t necessarily think of, if you are thinking of medicine for a mission trip, but things that certainly allow conversations to begin with people,” he says. “If these individuals in a developing nation don’t have reading glasses, they aren’t able to read the Word of God. So we want to put things in the team’s hands that will allow them to open up dialogue, to have discussions. They certainly won’t start out, most likely, as a discussion about Jesus, but that’s where we hope it ends.”

Suffering and death caused by malaria can be prevented if Christians will step up to provide the needed treatments, Ewy says.

“We have the medicines available that so many people need throughout the world,” he says. “A disease like malaria is preventable. We just need to get the medicine into the hands of those who are going and those who are serving throughout the world.”

Please pray that God would bless this partnership between Blessings International and Kairos 10 and provide enough malaria treatments to truly “end malaria for good.” Pray that the distribution of these medicines will open hearts to the good news of God’s love in Jesus Christ.

In this series on the anti-malaria partnership between Blessings International and Kairos 10, we are examining in depth the causes, effects, and solutions of the malaria scourge.

For more information about the anti-malaria campaign, visit www.blessing.org.

For more information about the global malaria problem, visit worldmalariaday.org.