As these lines are being written, panic from the Coronavirus has shaken world markets, halted air travel, quarantined entire nations, and caused a run on everything from canned food to toilet paper and hand sanitizer.
Hospitals are concerned about being overrun with new patients, and lack of sufficient tests are causing governments to hustle as they try to get a handle on just how many people may be infected or in danger of exposure.
But as you read this, and deal with the effects of the Coronavirus in your own community, imagine living in a place where hospitals are not concerned about being overwhelmed— for the simple reason that there are very few hospitals to begin with.
Imagine being sick and having nowhere to go. Imagine watching your children suffer from a fully treatable disease because the local clinic is either too far way, or full of empty shelves.
This is what our brothers and sisters in the war-torn Nuba mountains of Sudan experience regularly.
Persecution Project’s medical program was one of the first campaigns to become active when war returned to the Nuba in 2011.
Today, we are responsible for more than 80 percent of the medicines delivered to a population of more than 1.5 million spread over an area the size of the state of Georgia.
Persecution Project supplies 196 health facilities.
In addition, our well-repair team has fixed nearly 700 broken wells in the Nuba. Access to safe water is the biggest contributor to curbing the spread of disease.
Finally, Persecution Project is providing the primary support for the construction of a second referral hospital for the Nuba people.
Dr. Ahmed Zakariah is making tremendous progress in the overall construction, but especially on a new Maternity Ward, which will greatly increase the level of care for Nuba mothers and babies.
This progress is possible because of God’s mercy working through your active compassion. Your faithful support is not only building more walls on a new hospital, it is bridging together two communities of faith spread over many thousands of miles and creating hope in a place that really needs it.
Please continue to remember the persecuted in Sudan. When you see empty shelves at your local pharmacy, remember that what is a rare event for us is a daily matter for prayer for our brothers and sisters in Africa.
