Letter To the President of Ghana, President John Kofi Agyekum Kufuor
April 20, 2007
H.E. Dr. John Kofi Agyekum Kufuor
President of Ghana
Accra, Ghana,
Dr. Mr. President.
The Board of Directors, officers and members of the Liberian History, Education and Development, Inc. (LIHEDE) bring your post sincere greetings and best wishes on your unanimous election as Chairman of the African Union (AU) Independence Celebration of the Republic of Ghana. LIHEDE is a US-Liberia based nonprofit organization located in Greensboro, North Carolina, and comprised of Liberians and friends of Liberia dedicated to promoting education and development initiatives in Liberia.
We wish to appeal to you as the Chairman of the African Union to do the following for the children of Africa:
1. Bring the malaria issue of the African people to the world’s attention
2. Convene a an International Malaria Conference to come up with both Culture-Drive, Scientific & educational mechanism for malaria control
3. AU should have a specific platform/advocacy division for malaria control until it is controlled in Africa
4. Set a definitive and dialogue with USAD, WHO, World bank, Global Funds ,and other agencies to coordinate recourses and set timetable for malaria abatement in Africa
By the time you have finished reading this letter, 15 more Africans (mostly women and children) will have died from malaria, a preventable and curable disease that is older than all civilizations. Aggressive interventions resulted in malaria being eradicated in developed nations like the United States, Japan, Germany, Italy, Poland and Romania. Today, the citizens of these malaria-free nations have longer, better quality lives, and better working conditions, as their nations have prospered. However, Africa has been denied the same opportunities, and the only protection most of our people in malaria endemic areas have is to take foul medications in the hope that they will end the malaria that is wracking their bodies.
The World Health Organization (WHO) and other international health service organizations estimate that some 400 million Africans contract malaria each year, and up to 3 million die. African women are 175 times more likely to die in childbirth and pregnancy than Westerners, due to malaria. As a result, 90% of all malaria deaths, mostly children, happen on the African Continent. Equally important, we do not know of any place on this planet where a child dies every 30 seconds – or where 3 million people are buried annually from a preventable and treatable infectious disease like malaria.
This terrible death toll is equivalent to sending 27 fully loaded Boeing 757 jetliners crashing into a mountain every single day, year after year. You can see their faces as you read this letter, and your mind can take you to the nightmare of homes, tents and clinics where women and children shake with fever and convulsions, vomit when there is nothing left in their stomachs, and cry out from the pain and thirst. You can see the hollow eyes and anguished faces of husbands and parents, who must watch helplessly as their loved ones cling to life in the torment of their malaria, lapse into comas and permanent brain damage, or are laid in their graves. The economic effect of malaria is just as tragic, as it costs Africa an estimated $91 billion a year in lost gross domestic product.
Like slavery, the Holocaust, genocides, and other societal ills that humanity overlooked, and for which humanity sometimes apologized later, malaria has been ignored for much too long. It is vital that we Africans now add words to the scourge, because the technology to kill mosquitoes and disrupt their life cycle is available; the technology for better anti-malarial drugs is also available. We just need to have the moral clarity and medical honesty to use them. We have come to you because Ghana is known as the conscious of Africa liberation, especially staring the independence movement if Africa that brought up all African nations from colonial control.
LIHEDE is deeply concerned about the impact of this debilitating disease on our country and the rest of Africa, and committed to helping control and eventual eradicate the disease in post-war Liberia. Having held two conferences here in the United States, LIHEDE held the first post-war National Malaria Conference in Liberia, in collaboration with governmental and non-governmental organizations, including the Liberian Ministries of Health and Social Welfare, Youth and Sports, Information, and Cultural Affairs and Tourism; BNetTV.com of Canada; US-based Congress of Racial Equality; United Nations General Assembly (President); United Nations Millennium Project; US-based Kill Malaria Mosquitoes Now Coalition; West Coastal Aerial Applicators, Inc.; Tr-Ac-Net consulting group; and AME University, Cuttington University College in Liberia, and University of Liberia.
The conference was held from December 14-16 on the University of Liberia main campus in Monrovia. It brought together Liberians and friends of Liberia, including traditional and nontraditional health and medical practitioners, to share knowledge, review national malaria control and prevention strategies and policies, and identify the appropriate combination of technologies that would eventually lead to the control of malaria.
Its primary purpose is to explain to Liberian President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, members of her government and other attendees the merits of comprehensive, integrated malaria control strategies like those proposed by the World Health Organization, U.S. Agency for International Development, and Tr-AC-Net. Its second purpose was to appeal to nations and donors to help provide the financial and other resources needed to combat and eventually eradicate this deadly, but preventable and treatable, disease.
Our objective is to reduce malaria morbidity and mortality by 80 percent in 2010 – and thereby improve health, stability, opportunity, productivity and prosperity in Liberia and neighboring nations. One of the highlights of the Conference was an invitation extended to officials of LIHEDE during the Conference by the US Ambassador to Liberia, Hon. Donald Booth, to join him at the US embassy to witness the historic announcement made by President Bush via satellite, naming Liberia as a focused county to benefit from the PMI funds. Liberia is therefore expected to receive 2.5 million in 2007 and 8 million in 2008 to combat the deadly but curable disease, malaria.
Mr. President, with our success statement, we cannot defeat malaria selectively or like a lottery where one person wins several millions while the majority of the people remain poor and poorer. Malaria control in Africa must a regional and integrated approach by all of the Saharan African nations championed by the AU. It is against this backdrop that we have come to you to join hand to take African malaria to the world stage because we know your dedicated work and your strong support for our children, our common future. We make this request not because of your insights about the impact poverty and diseases, including malaria, but because you are a Son of Africa with a strong sense of your divine obligation and opportunity to save African children’s lives. Mr. President, when you speak not just Africa hears you but the world listens. We, therefore, we appeal to you and will be honored for you to join hand to launch the Malaria Awareness and Control Program at the next AU Conference.
Thank you very much for considering our request. We prayerfully look forward to your support for this humanitarian cause aimed at finding a lasting end to endemic and epidemic malaria in Africa. A LIHEDE delegation would like to meet with you on this matter. We look forward to hearing from you at your earliest convenience. (In the meantime, please visit our website at www.lihede.org.)
Sincerely,
Syrulwa Somah, PhD.
Executive Director, LIHEDE
somah@ncat.edu or info@lihede.org