Suffering for a month, she had traveled to four rural clinics and one city hospital desperate for help. Her suspected diagnosis wasn’t cancer or heart disease. It was COVID-19. But the hospital had no treatment available.
By then Douboma and her husband, who live in rural Liberia, had run out of money. So Douboma was left with little choice but to go home to die. But there was one remaining clinic where they had not yet appealed for help.
As Douboma lay in her home drifting into unconsciousness, someone suggested they make one last appeal for help. So family members and a few volunteers eased Douboma’s small frame into an improvised hammock made by tying the ends of a blanket to a pole. They carried Douboma for four hours until they reached the United Methodist clinic in Liberia’s John Dean Town. It was Douboma’s sixth attempt to get help, and this time she was not turned away.
Following proper infection protocol, the staff examined and retested her. As it turns out, Douboma wasn’t suffering from COVID-19 after all. She was suffering from malaria, a deadly but common and treatable disease. After receiving intravenous antimalarial medicine, Douboma was feeling remarkably better after only two days.
"Thank God for the Methodist people," Douboma says. "Thanks for the good, good medicine they can bring every time. Thank God for all the people who send this good medicine and for the good doctors for poor people."
With the help of people like you—and the local partnerships we have cultivated over many years—every day our Global Health programs are helping people like Douboma receive the life-saving medical care they need.
This is what it means to be connected across the globe as United Methodists and what it looks like when we support each other through our prayers, presence, gifts, service, and witness - this is what it means to be United Methodist.
Hope From United Methodist Clinics in Africa
Douboma Wieh had given up hope.
Suffering for a month, she had traveled to four rural clinics and one city hospital desperate for help. Her suspected diagnosis wasn’t cancer or heart disease. It was COVID-19. But the hospital had no treatment available.
By then Douboma and her husband, who live in rural Liberia, had run out of money. So Douboma was left with little choice but to go home to die. But there was one remaining clinic where they had not yet appealed for help.
As Douboma lay in her home drifting into unconsciousness, someone suggested they make one last appeal for help. So family members and a few volunteers eased Douboma’s small frame into an improvised hammock made by tying the ends of a blanket to a pole. They carried Douboma for four hours until they reached the United Methodist clinic in Liberia’s John Dean Town. It was Douboma’s sixth attempt to get help, and this time she was not turned away.
Following proper infection protocol, the staff examined and retested her. As it turns out, Douboma wasn’t suffering from COVID-19 after all. She was suffering from malaria, a deadly but common and treatable disease. After receiving intravenous antimalarial medicine, Douboma was feeling remarkably better after only two days.
"Thank God for the Methodist people," Douboma says. "Thanks for the good, good medicine they can bring every time. Thank God for all the people who send this good medicine and for the good doctors for poor people."
With the help of people like you—and the local partnerships we have cultivated over many years—every day our Global Health programs are helping people like Douboma receive the life-saving medical care they need.
This is what it means to be connected across the globe as United Methodists and what it looks like when we support each other through our prayers, presence, gifts, service, and witness - this is what it means to be United Methodist.