Kigali, Rwanda – At the Commonwealth Youth Forum held on the sidelines of the 26th Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting (CHOGM) 2022, Impact Santé Afrique (ISA) had the pleasure to meet Reverend Brother Ackim Nkhoma, a youth delegate willing to share his experience as a religious leader committed to the fight against malaria.
My name is Ackim NKHOMA from Zambia and I came to the Commonwealth Youth Forum in Kigali as part of the NGO “Flame Zambia“. FLAME is an organization called Faith Leaders Advocacy for Malaria Elimination (FLAME) and our main role is to coordinate religious leaders. It is a coalition of Christians, Muslims and believers. These three religious groups work together to advocate on behalf of medical doctors because we know that as religious leaders, our voices are heard.
As an example, there was a woman who had malaria in our community. The doctor told her to go and get some medicine, but she went to a pastor instead, a religious leader, and the pastor told her not to take the medicine, that the disease was demonic, and what happened was that the woman died.
She didn’t die because of malaria, she died because of ignorance.
That’s why, as religious leaders, we want to advocate! We want to let the communities know that malaria is a serious disease. We advocate in our churches, in schools, in the streets, in the communities, and everywhere we can. We want people to know the danger of malaria so that we can eliminate it in Zambia.
My message to our leaders
Dear leaders, we need you to help us be united. Leaders need to work together because there is much more that unites us than divides us. We can see that mosquitoes are united, and that is why they manage to take lives through malaria. So even us, if we are united, we can beat malaria effectively. Another thing we want is for you, our leaders, to engage with us financially and in all aspects of life. Help us to end malaria.
We are all in this together!
Article written by Edith Essomba.
