This weekend, local efforts are being made to put on a virtual fundraiser for a children’s initiative in Malawi, a country in East Africa.

The Miles for Malawi race, which has been put on in years past, is moving forward despite the coronavirus pandemic. Organizers have put together a way people can still donate while also getting in exercise: run the distances on your own schedule! Participants can sign up either individually or as a team and choose from four distances: 5K, 10K, half-marathon or a full marathon, with a one-mile option available for children. Then, using the It’s Your Race mobile app, participants track their times and distances, which will be posted on the fundraiser’s website. Prizes will be available, with all proceeds from registrants going directly to the Malawi Children’s Initiative.

Dr. Elizabeth Fitzgerald helped found the initiative with her husband, Dr. David Fitzgerald. The Chapel Hill couple moved to Malawi in 2011 and practiced medicine there, eventually creating the initiative in 2017 to improve the healthcare, education and food security of the country’s children.

Dr. Fitzgerald recently spoke with 97.9 The Hill’s Aaron Keck about the initiative and her experience in Malawi.

“It is completely unlike anything you would see here,” she described. “We have as many as 500 patients admitted at a time in a space built for 290 patients. It’s understaffed, there are not enough medications. The diseases we see there are very different from the ones we see [in the United States.] We see a lot of malnutrition, HIV and tuberculosis.”

Dr. Fitzgerald said the team at the Kamuzu Central Hospital where she worked as very committed, showing up every day to care for children under very difficult circumstances.

“With the COVID-19 pandemic,” she said, “physicians in the United States are being faced with decision-making about resource allocation. That is something people in Malawi and many other low and middle-income countries deal with every day, all the time. It’s a place that is inspiring and overwhelming.”

The Malawi Children’s Initiative opened a new clinical laboratory in the country in November, an achievement partially made possible by last year’s Miles for Malawi fundraiser.

The Miles for Malawi virtual fundraiser and races will run from Friday at 6 p.m. to Sunday at midnight.

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