Rakiya

Please help break the cycle of unbearable pain and life-long sight loss caused by River Blindness.

Your gift will be multiplied x7.

…“Let Your hand be with me, and keep me from harm so that I will be free from pain.” And God granted his request.” – 1 Chronicles 4:10

The time seems right to celebrate with this prayer. Across Africa, gifts like yours are helping to protect children and adults from the life-long harm, pain and sightlessness of River Blindness.

Thanks to people like you, great progress is being made. Many villages now no longer need River Blindness medication because their lands are being made safe from the parasites that cause such misery.

But there are still places at risk where River Blindness is causing life-long avoidable sight loss and pain. Please keep supporting and advancing this vital ministry. If you are able, please send a gift to bless young ones like Rakiya’s grandchildren, so they can receive the parasite-killing medication they need… right on time, in the exact amount… to keep them protected from River Blindness!

The power of your gift will be multiplied x7, because every $1 you send means $7 of medication reaches the remote villages at greatest risk from these parasites.

That means your gift will be multiplied x7 to help protect children’s eyes. Without it, they have no defence against River Blindness.

Please prayerfully consider sending your gift before 31 March, the end of the financial year, so you can claim your tax rebate straight away.

Grandmother Rakiya understands fear of harm and pain so well. Living in Nigeria, she has suffered painfully for decades, along with avoidable blindness and extreme poverty. Years ago, she had no protection from River Blindness. No medication reached her. The parasites were free to do their worst.

“When I lost my sight,” Rakiya explains, “I lived in another village far away, in my husband’s house, and I was already a mother of three young children.”

This hardworking woman went down to the local river every day to draw water. The biting flies were a painful nuisance, but Rakiya had no idea they were flooding her body with parasitic eggs.

Then it came – the torment and blindness caused by the parasitic worm infestation called River Blindness. “My skin was itching severely”… and later… “my eyes became more and more hazy. I couldn’t see my hand. I asked the children if it was still dark. They said the sun was up. I knew I was blind. That was more than 20 years ago.”

No medication or surgery can ever restore her sight – and the next part in her story is heartbreaking.

“My husband didn’t want to take care of me. He told me, ‘I cannot live with a blind woman in my house. PACK AND GO!’ I had to leave my home,” Rakiya said, tearfully.

With a stick in one hand, her children’s little hands in the other, Rakiya tried to find her way back to her childhood home. When kind strangers helped her, hope began to rise. Surely her mother and family would support her.

But unfortunately more heartbreak was waiting. “I was shocked to learn that my mother was blind like me… as well as my brother who lives next door. I didn’t know about that.”

We cannot let this situation flow on to the next generation. People like you have been doing such a wonderful job of protecting them. Please help keep this going. Send your River Blindness gift today, to help protect children and adults against the misfortune that befell Rakiya, her brother, and their mother.

As well as living with avoidable blindness, all three were painfully afflicted beyond belief, by the parasitic life-cycle occurring in their bodies.

Few today know how the River Blindness parasites make people suffer: how the eggs enter the bloodstream through a fly’s painful bite; how the eggs become millions of tiny parasitic worms; and how the dying parasites cause unbearable irritation.

The itching is so dreadful, people dig at their own flesh with the sharpest blades they can find – cutting through their skin to try to gouge out the dead and dying worms – but they can’t.

This description is hard to read. But because of faithful people like you, River Blindness is far less common in Africa now. Praise God for the effectiveness of this ministry!

Please continue this life-changing ministry to help the next generation, like Rakiya’s grandchildren, to break the cycle of life-long avoidable sight loss and pain caused by River Blindness.

Not all the young parasitic worms die. If a worm gets to mature, it can live in the body for up to 20 years! Many of them move to the warmth, moisture and food supply – in the human eye!

“I felt worms in my eyes,” recalls Rakiya. These worms ate her optic nerve and robbed her of her sight forever.

The only way to stop these parasitic worms maturing, and destroying sight, is to kill them every year. That is why annual doses of parasite-killing medication is so important.

Despite all she has been through, Rakiya has never given up. Blind she may be, but with help she still cooks for her mother, she washes dishes, she fetches water from the river, and she organises the firewood.

Most important of all, Rakiya has kept her children safe. She is an incredible mother. Despite her blindness and pain, she has made sure that every year her children, and grandchildren, line up to have their names checked off in the distribution team’s careful notebooks and receive their sight-saving medication.

Thanks to Rakiya’s dedication, and support like yours, all of her children and grandchildren have been spared. Praise God that two generations have been protected from contracting River Blindness.

Today we pray you keep supporting this sight-saving ministry to help break the cycle of life-long avoidable sight loss and pain caused by River Blindness. Please send your gift of protection today, which will be multiplied x7 to help medication reach people who need it – like Rakiya’s adult children and her grandchildren.

Your support for River Blindness medication will be an amazing answer to prayer for people like Rakiya. She asked only that her children and grandchildren be safe. God has granted her request, through wonderful cbm supporters like you. Thank you for being willing to care for people facing the double challenge of poverty and disability.

Please keep protecting the most remote villages in Nigeria from harm, pain and sightlessness, by sending your River Blindness gift today. Your kindness will be multiplied seven-fold!

Rakiya will never see the faces of her grandchildren, but thanks to gifts like yours she knows they are safe from sight-stealing parasitic worms – as long as they receive their medication right on time. Please make sure that happens, by sending your gift – multiplied x7 to protect children and adults across Africa from River Blindness.

The tax year ends soon. To take full advantage of getting your rebate this year, please send your gift before the 31 March 2024. The IRD will give you back a third of what you send to fight River Blindness! What a blessing. Thank you.