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Global Health

Explore impact stories and learn how your support helps partners strengthen health systems and provide essential care for individuals and communities around the world.

In wake of the abrupt loss of billions of dollars of U.S. foreign aid, decades of global health and development work is now at risk. Global Ministries has moved to fill some funding gaps through UMC connections to ease disruption of health services where possible.

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At the Chicuque Rural Hospital in Mozambique, a safe haven for hundreds of women and children is receiving needed upgrades and renovations.
Through net distribution, rapid testing, education campaigns and training of health care workers, thousands are protected against malaria in Sierra Leone, Burundi and Angola.
Global Health unit staff visited health facilities to view improvements and discuss challenges in an area of the country hard-hit by cyclones in recent years.
Through funding from Global Ministries, more than 100 women living with HIV in the Kivu Conference are receiving counseling, transportation help and microcredit loans.
Through various campaigns and long-term work in rural communities, United Methodist health practitioners in Africa have been working toward the goal of reducing malaria deaths and spreading affordable treatment options, information and prevention strategies across the communities most affected by the disease.
A Global Health partnership with Engineers in Action supplies rural Indigenous Methodist churches in Bolivia with restrooms and handwashing stations. In Ecuador, a new water source for nine communities nears completion
A partnership between Global Ministries’ Global Health program and the Zimbabwe UMC Health Board revitalizes United Methodist hospitals within the episcopal area. Old Mutare, a mission hospital founded by Methodist missionaries, is using new facilities, staff and equipment to continue its legacy of medical care in rural Zimbabwe.
Together, Global Ministries’ Global Health program and UMC health boards support about 75,000 pregnant women, new mothers and children in Africa with HIV and AIDS resources, drastically reducing mother to baby HIV transmission.
No longer having to source water from contaminated rivers, streams and wells, four villages draw clean potable water through newly built water towers with pump and wash stations.
Global Health partners with the North Katanga UMC for a cholera campaign that provides more treatment options and prevention measures, but also aims to change the understanding of entire communities about water safety and sanitation to stop the disease in its tracks.

Contact Information

Have questions? Send us an inquiry and we’ll get back to you promptly. Please direct all media inquiries to Susan Clark, chief communications officer for Global Ministries and UMCOR.

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Susan Clark, Chief Communications Officer
media@umcmission.org
800-862-4246

UMCOR Campaigns

Six Years, No Solution: A 500-Gallon Tank Carries Hope to West Virginia’s Forgotten

McDowell County is one of the poorest in the U.S., and the communities of Anawalt, Leckie and Gary are some of the hardest hit by the current six-year water crisis. All have Methodist churches that are part of the Welch Charge.

To ease the burden of residents who have to purchase many gallons of drinking water weekly, the Welch Charge contacted the West Virginia Conference Disaster Response Coordinator, Jim McCune, for help. McCune’s United Methodist Committee on Relief (UMCOR) connection put him in touch with Global Ministries’ Water, Sanitation and Hygiene (WASH) program. 

A WASH grant allowed them to obtain a 500-gallon “water buffalo.” The conference disaster response team arranged to fill the portable water buffalo from the Welch water system, the county seat of McDowell, and transport it to Gary, where residents have been supplied with refillable containers. Residents of all three towns can come to get water, and volunteers will also continue deliveries for those who need it. Meanwhile, residents, including church members, continue to advocate state and local officials for a permanent solution to their aging, compromised water infrastructure. Full Story