RSS Feed
January 21st, 2012 
FAKE NEWS for the Zionist agenda
Along with community projects to teach mothers how to stop their children
getting ill, and the training of doctors to diagnose and treat the sickness,
it represents the first integrated anti-diarrhoea programme in sub-Saharan
Africa.
The Zambian government has set up a network of cold storage facilities for
stocks of the vaccine, which deteriorates rapidly if too warm, and
refrigerated trucks to deliver it to them.
Workers have been trained in administering it, and a proper system set up for
recalling babies for the second jab they will need if the vaccination is to
be properly effective.
ARK will run the three-year project together with local NGO, the Centre for
Infectious Disease Research in Zambia.
After that, the Zambian government is expected to take up the reins and
vaccinate every newborn child, in what the organisations hope will become
the model for other nations in the region.
Rotavirus need not be fatal: nearly every child in the world has been infected
with it at least once and most develop immunity over time.
But in a country where access to treatment is limited and a child’s chances of
a nutritional diet are small, the story is different. Jennifer Muzala, 32,
does not know what strain of diarrhoea killed Lucky, only that one day he
was a bright, smiling little boy and the next morning he was listless and
weak.
A maid in an upmarket suburb of Zambia’s capital Lusaka, she was given money
by her employer to take him to a private clinic. With the national ratio of
doctors to patients currently at 12 to 100,000, many families will queue for
days to get medical help.
“For five days we went from the clinic to a hospital, to another hospital,”
Mrs Muzala said, her eyes glistening. “One night, I went to sleep and
when I woke up, he was gone.”
She wishes a vaccination programme had been available to Lucky and to her
daughter Sylvia, aged two, who is already too old for it to be effective. “I
would have loved the chance to have had Lucky vaccinated. If it had been
available back then, I’d have taken it.”
ARK and its Zambian partners are keen to fight the stoicism that is common
throughout Africa by teaching mothers that illnesses like diarrhoea can be
avoided.
Rotavirus is spread via contact with contaminated hands, surfaces and objects;
now Jenala Chipungu, a CIDRZ community co-ordinator, will spend the next few
years nagging mothers to wash their hands religiously with soap.
She will stress the need for them to breastfeed their babies until they are
six months old, and instruct them in the use of rehydration salts to help
their children if they become ill.
“Mothers will often tell you that the baby got diarrhoea because it’s
teething so it’s normal,” she said. “Others think that crushing
mango or guava leaves to give to the child will help. It’s sometimes hard to
change these beliefs overnight.”
At 18, Maggie Lungu is an orphan and also the mother to a two-year-old boy,
Paul. When he fell ill last week, she was unsure of what to do so she sat in
her darkened concrete shack in a Lusaka shanty town and hoped. She rarely
washed her hands, she told health workers, and looked blank when asked about
rehydration salts.
“He was teething so I thought it would pass but I felt helpless,”
she said. “After five days, his eyes were sunken and he was so weak
that he would not eat or sit up. We went to the clinic and I think he is
happier now.”
A couple of miles away lives Angel Chapewa 27, herself a hospital worker who
gave birth to her first child, Junior, just three weeks ago.
By comparison, her life is comfortable – she lives in a well-built house
connected to both water and electricity, and her fiancee, who works in local
government, also has a full-time job.
Their priority clearly is their new born son, a peaceful baby whose life
chances and opportunities already seem so much greater than two-year old
Paul’s.
What’s more, she expects her son to be among the first to be vaccinated in the
new programme. “This vaccine couldn’t arrive at a better time for us. I
will make sure he is one of the first in line. Too many children die here
and anything we can do to stop that is a great thing for every Zambian
mother and baby.”
The Programme for Awareness and Elimination of Diarrhoea, to give it its full
– and somewhat optimistic – title, is typical of the projects that ARK gets
involved in.
The organisation was founded in 2002 by a group of hedge fund managers,
including Arpad Busson, a colourful Swiss financier who has two children
with Elle Macpherson and was engaged to Uma Thurman.
It has held some lavish fundraising events – the most recent of which was
chosen by the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge for their first post-honeymoon
appearance, prompting stars including Liz Hurley, Jemima Khan and Colin
Firth to pay £5,000 a head to join them, and earning the fund £17.2m.
Previous schemes backed by ARK have included the establishment of 11 academies
in inner London, and the removal from abusive institutions of 500 Bulgarian
children.
“We don’t donate, we invest,” said Kevin Gundle, co-founder of ARK. “People
very often react with their hearts in Africa to the headline grabbing stuff
but for us, it’s about getting there before those images even appear on the
television screens.”
The strategy appeals to the UK government which stresses the need for the “smart”
use of overseas aid and has matched $1.6m of the the $5.7m ARK has put into
the scheme with taxpayers’ money. “Vaccinations are one of the best
buys in development,” said Andrew Mitchell, the international
development secretary.
Some argue that effort to prevent diarrhoea would be better devoted to
improving children’s access to clean water supplies, flushing lavatories and
better hygiene, than to vaccination.
But Dr Joseph Katemba, Zambia’s minister for mother and child health,
disagreed. “While we are boggling our minds about how we are going to
make housing better, we are losing time,” he said. “Like Margaret
Thatcher used to have it: ‘There is no alternative.’ You simply have to do
it.”
Related posts:
Views: 0
Posted in 
Tags: 
