World's AIDS day-clip that serves as a reminder

of the many lives being lost every day due to an easily preventable disease. It seems to me that lack of knowledge and poverty are two of the greatest enemies in our 'fight' over the disease. I took an HIV test a few days ago, and was glad to find out I am negative. I am ashamed to say that it was the first time I took the test but have decided to do it more frequently now. It's very important that people get tested and not take things for granted-especially people of African descent because we are the ones suffering the most. Stay Safe!

Seun Kuti Sings About Malaria

Seun Kuti, son of Afrobeat pioneer and human rights activist, Fela Kuti has decided to continue where his father left off. His music, just like his father, is dedicated to Africa's problems. I had the wonderful experience of watching him in concert on July 6th at central park, nyc and it was incredible! Here is a clip of him in Dakar singing one of the hits of his first album. The track is called "Mosquito song"...lyrics may be considered quite humorous but the message is serious especially when you consider that malaria, an easily preventable disease, is one of the leading causes of death in Africa.

Why Africa Fears Western Medicine

The following article (excerpt) is by Harriet Washington author of "Medical Aparthied: The Dark History of Medical Experimentation on Black Americans from Colonial Times to Present" :

...But to many Africans, the accusations, which have been validated by a guilty verdict and a promise to reimburse the families of the infected children with a $426 million payout, seem perfectly plausible. The medical workers’ release appears to be the latest episode in a health care nightmare in which white and Western-trained doctors and nurses have harmed Africans — and have gone unpunished. The evidence against the Bulgarian medical team, like H.I.V.-contaminated vials discovered in their apartments, has seemed to Westerners preposterous. But to dismiss the Libyan accusations of medical malfeasance out of hand means losing an opportunity to understand why a dangerous suspicion of medicine is so widespread in Africa.
Africa has harbored a number of high-profile Western medical miscreants who have intentionally administered deadly agents under the guise of providing health care or conducting research. In March 2000, Werner Bezwoda, a cancer researcher at South Africa’s Witwatersrand University, was fired after conducting medical experiments involving very high doses of chemotherapy on black breast-cancer patients, possibly without their knowledge or consent. In Zimbabwe, in 1995, Richard McGown, a Scottish anesthesiologist, was accused of five murders and convicted in the deaths of two infant patients whom he injected with lethal doses of morphine. And Dr. Michael Swango, ultimately convicted of murder after pleading guilty to killing three American patients with lethal injections of potassium, is suspected of causing the deaths of 60 other people, many of them in Zimbabwe and Zambia during the 1980s and ’90s. (Dr. Swango was never tried on the African charges.)
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These medical killers are well known throughout Africa, but the most notorious is Wouter Basson, a former head of Project Coast, South Africa’s chemical and biological weapons unit under apartheid. Dr. Basson was charged with killing hundreds of blacks in South Africa and Namibia, from 1979 to 1987, many via injected poisons. He was never convicted in South African courts, even though his lieutenants testified in detail and with consistency about the medical crimes they conducted against blacks.
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Such well-publicized events have spread a fear of medicine throughout Africa, even in countries where Western doctors have not practiced in significant numbers. It is a fear the continent can ill afford when medical care is already hard to come by. Only 1.3 percent of the world’s health workers practice in sub-Saharan Africa, although the region harbors fully 25 percent of the world’s disease. A minimum of 2.5 health workers is needed for every 1,000 people, according to standards set by the United Nations, but only six African countries have this many.
The distrust of Western medical workers has had direct consequences. Since 2003, for example, polio has been on the rise in Nigeria, Chad and Burkina Faso because many people avoid vaccinations, believing that the vaccines are contaminated with H.I.V. or are actually sterilization agents in disguise. This would sound incredible were it not that scientists working for Dr. Basson’s Project Coast reported that one of their chief goals was to find ways to selectively and secretly sterilize Africans.
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Such tragedies highlight the challenges facing even the most idealistic medical workers, who can find themselves working under unhygienic conditions that threaten patients’ welfare. Well-meaning Western caregivers must sometimes use incompletely cleaned or unsterilized needles, simply because nothing else is available. These needles can and do spread infectious agents like H.I.V. — proving that Western medical practices need not be intentional to be deadly.
Although the World Health Organization maintains that the reuse of syringes without sterilization accounts for only 2.5 percent of new H.I.V. infections in Africa, a 2003 study in The International Journal of S.T.D. and AIDS found that as many as 40 percent of H.I.V. infections in Africa are caused by contaminated needles during medical treatment. Even the conservative W.H.O. estimate translates to tens of thousands of cases.
Several esteemed science journals, including Nature, have suggested that the Libyan children were infected in just this manner, through the re-use of incompletely cleaned medical instruments, long before the Bulgarian nurses arrived in Libya. If this is the case, then the Libyan accusations of iatrogenic, or healer-transmitted, infection are true. The acts may not have been intentional, but given the history of Western medicine in Africa, accusations that they were done consciously are far from paranoid.
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Certainly, the vast majority of beneficent Western medical workers in Africa are to be thanked, not censured. But the canon of “silence equals death” applies here: We are ignoring a responsibility to defend the mass of innocent Western doctors against the belief that they are not treating disease, but intentionally spreading it. We should approach Africans’ suspicions with respect, realizing that they are born of the acts of a few monsters and of the deadly constraints on medical care in difficult conditions. By continuing to dismiss their reasonable fears, we raise the risk of even more needless illness and death.
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/07/31/opinion/31washington.html

Why Africa Fears Western Medicine-Additional Links

Medical Experimentation on minorities, the poor and disenfranchized does not come as a shock to most people these days. And Africa as a target for experimentation is not only common but sadly to be expected. The continent holds a significantly high percentage of poverty stricken, disease ridden people in comparison to the rest of the world. And with the prevalence of HIV in many areas of Africa, researchers have ample reason to conduct thier work there. With research comes medical abuses and cases of unsuspecting "guinea pigs" of Africa. Here are just a few more examples of why, in Harriet Washington's words, Africa fears western medicine.

http://www.aegis.com/news/ips/1997/IP970905.html

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/7453449.stm

To read Harriet Washington's article go here:
http://afra-motherland.blogspot.com/2008/06/why-africa-fears-western-medicine.html

When Communities Come Together

This video shows the wonderful work that volunteers are doing in Africa to provide medication for malaria and river blindness in thier communities. Africans cannot afford to always depend on outsiders for help. Assisting each other is the only way we can uplift ourselves and our continent on a longlasting/permanent basis.

Quotes on AIDS

Found these quotes on africaaction.org.

"Years from now people will ask about AIDS in Africa — as with the Holocaust or the Rwandan genocide — ‘How could the world have known — and failed to act?’" Africa Action

"I have to say that the ongoing plight of Africa forces me to perpetual rage. It's all so unnecessary, so crazy that hundreds of millions of people should be thus abandoned." Former UN Special Envoy for HIV/AIDS in Africa Stephen Lewis, 2005

"The vision which fueled our struggle for freedom… will be needed if we are to bring AIDS under control. This is a war." Former South African President Nelson Mandela, February 2002

"If this would have happened in the Balkans, or in Eastern Europe… with white people, the reaction would have been different." Peter Piot, UNAIDS, July 2000

You can view my take on HIV\AIDS by reading the poem, "Viral Monster" in the poetry section.

So Called Food Shortage

There have been countless articles these days on the supposed food shortage going on around the world. A sample article can be found here: http://www.baltimorechronicle.com/2008/041608Brown.shtml
And with the grim news comes grimmer statistics and predictions of more doom. According to the article the food crises has sparked riots in Haiti, Egypt, Morocco, Ethiopia, Indonesia, Mexico, Phillipines and Senegal. I do not doubt that there is a current problem with food in relation to the world, however over-population which has been cited by many as the main cause of food shortage is false. The purpose of life is expansion and growth. Population increase is just another way of life manifesting itself. Food shortages are a result of environmental abuse, exploitation of human beings by corrupt, oppressive governments in third world countries and self serving western nations, and in some case non-western nations (lets keep in mind China and Darfur as a prime example).

In the case of Africa where food shortage is said to hit hard, it is almost paradoxical in context. Africa is extremely rich in natural resources from petroluem and cocoa to real expensive rocks (diamonds and gold for example) distributed expansively throughout the continent. Food shortage and poverty in Africa is a result of the lack of redistribution of wealth. And we know very well who to blame for this. Another painful fact is that conflict does not allow for food production. How does one grow food in regions where conflict has been occuring for several years?

Moral responsibility for one another is the first step in ensuring food supply for every single person on this planet. No one deserves to be hungry. No one should be hungry. I believe this planet has an unlimited supply of everything we need...and I mean everything. But when we exploit the earth and exploit each other, how can the earth serve us? Earth is our home. I know no other place. And until governments in several nations begin to do the right thing, people will continue to die and suffer unnecessarily over something that when you really think about it ought to be free just like air and sunlight.

World Malaria Day

Yes, there is a World Malaria Day and it is hosted on April 25th. Even though malaria is easily preventable and treatable still, a million people die annually from the disease. Children are the most affected casualties. Growing up in Nigeria, I experienced a few bounts of malaria. Being accustomed to the illness and knowing many people who suffered from it and recovered created the impression in me that it was "normal." It was after I moved to the West that I learned the deadly effect it had on people. In Nigeria, I was fortunate enough to have adequate treatment during those times. Sadly, that is not the case for millions of people in a continent that struggles with even the most basic healthcare needs.

Below is a sample article that provides more information about the disease and the attempts being made to eradicate it in Africa.
http://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/mm5615a7.htm

In most cases, the solution is simply education. I've always wanted to create an organization that raises awareness about HIV and malaria prevention. One of my goals would be to visit poverty stricken communities and educate them on prevention methods. Affordable medicine is another issue that needs to be tackled as well. However, I am still putting peices together on how to accomplish this. What I find to be a disadvantage is my lack of professional experience in the health field. I consider myself health savvy but unfortunately that will not give me the credentials I may need. I would like to have as many healthcare professionals in my team as possible who are willing and able to travel to Africa and be dedicated to this mission. We can start with one country until a chain is established. Sounds ambitious but thinking big is always a great start to accomplishing great things. If interested please send me an email at echizea@hotmail.com.

Thoughts On Africa's Healthcare

Even though I consider myself a citizen of the world, I have a special affinity towards Africa as my homeland. When looking for a sentence to describe Africa, I consider WEB Dubois's words: "Africa is at once the most romantic and most tragic of continents." Africa boasts the best wildlife, landscapes and incredibly spirited people than any place I can think of...yet wars, diseases,economic oppression and corruption dominates this continent like a constant shadow.
Africa is the second largest continent in the world and the most populous continent with about 900 million people. It is the birth place of civilization. Yet in modern Africa lack of clean water, malnutrition, basic healthcare needs and underequiped hospitals is the norm. Human conflicts occurring in the region only threaten to make the situation worse. Then of course there is HIV, which is a major problem in Africa. We may not all agree with the statistics (personally, I am not one to get carried away with statistics) but only a delusional person will fail to see that it is one of the major health crises plaguing the continent. Millions of children have been left orphaned from the disease. And then of course there is the issue of economic inequality-where the rich get richer and the poor get poorer.
I have so many dreams for Africa. I would like to see the proletariat become empowered and take responsibility for themselves and thier communities. I would like to see Africans demand change from governments in respective countries without fear. I would like to see the healthcare system revitalized in such a way that the average person can afford basic necessities from clean water to medication to cure malaria, tuberclusis and other diseases. I would like to see a healthy, prosperous and spiritually empowered Africa.
I sincerely believe that unless Africa is revived the world cannot be fully transformed into a planet of peace, love and equality for all. This is because there are just way too many people at stake.
I am an eternal optimist (as well) and do believe that Africa will be transformed. However the occasion and level of transformation depends on us all.