THE ALS ICE BUCKET CHALLENGE: AFRICAN'S SILLY TAKE IT ISSUES NOT PARTICULARLY AFFECTING COMMUNITIES IN EPIDEMIC PROPORTIONS.

Call me a negative person for pointing how silly the ALS ice bucket challenge has been portrayed, especially in Africa where more prominent health challenges are decimating our livelyhoods daily and no one is pointing this out. To reveal how insignificant the disease is in Africa, google search had no search suggestions for the ''ALS statistics in africa''

Before i'm brutally crucified and let to rot in the baking sun, i don't condemn the awareness campaign for the motor neuron disease. My grouse is with Africans, especially celebrities, mostly made up of football stars, film stars, music stars and other high profile personalities dousing themselves with ice cold water which in any case is a travesty in itself as most Africans don't have easy access to fresh clean water to drink so most consume whatever water they can find to raise awareness for ALS. I watched a few of the videos, from Emmanuel Adebayor, to Nigerian Goal keeper Vincent Enyeama and music mogul Dan jazzy drenching themselves with buckets. It is not all bad but one would have expected them to highlight the health issues affecting us presently with the challenge, hijacking the ALS and promoting the battle against Malaria, Ebola and Hepatitis. There is a recent rise in testicular cancer among men, breast cancer among women and the wanton negligence of hepatitis virus.

Thanks to Ghanaian on air personality Kati G who has started a campaign on Ebola, i doubt it will catch on though as we in Africa never take our health issues seriously.

GHANAIN KAT G'S EBOLA ICE BUCKET CHALLENGE

DON JAZZY, NIGERIAN MUSIC MOGUL

 MICHAEL ESSIEN, GHANAIAN SOCCER STAR

 MICHAEL ESSIEN, GHANAIAN SOCCER STAR

THE EBOLA CHALLENGE

The last few weeks unfortunately have proven how ill prepared we are for medical disasters in some parts of West Africa. Wish I could say this lack or preparedness is limited to the countries presently battling the Ebola scourge but it goes far beyond and has just taken special grace that the most ill prepared countries have so far been spared the scourge. 

We at this organisation wish well and pray for all medical personnel in Guinee, Sierra Leone, Liberia and Nigeria battling to contain the spread of this deadly virus. These are brave men and women who have sworn on oath to shield us with their lives when scourges like this spring up. Daily we read of the brave efforts of people who we don't know, all we see is men and women in protective clothings administering care to the effected or burying the dead. 

For every Dr Omar Khan in Sierra Leone and Dr. Ameyo Stella Adadevoh in Nigeria and the countless medical warriors in Liberia and Guinee who have tried all they can within their limit to contain the spread of the disease we say God bless and protect you. 

To those who have lost their lives like Dr Khan and the Nigerian Nurse, may God grant you rest and give your family the strenght to live on. 

Viruses as well as many other deadly organisms only spread in dirty environs, lets keep our surroundings clean.

Inaccurate statistical data which are not even available in most countries makes measuring the burden on the lives and the population of sub-Saharan Africa difficult. Hepatitis B though, which i like to refer as the baddest guy of the lot seems to enjoy some attention in terms of available data. The data which is widely available suggests that between 15-60% of the normal population in many African countries may be positive for Hepatitis B infection Liver disease was the third most common (12.1%) of all 4,568 deaths on the medical wards of the University College Hospital, Ibadan, Nigeria over a 14-year period.

You may think that isn't a huge number, but that is just in one hospital. There are over twenty university teaching hospitals in Nigeria and several thousand other private hospitals, clinics and health centres, scattered across the country. In some cases, the doctors or health practitioners who lack knowledge of the HBV just keep treating patients for such ailments as Malaria of typhoid fever. By the time they are referred and drained of their wages it is too late and the liver is damaged, at this point the patients are managed until their impending death. In University College Hospital Ibadan of all causes of deaths from liver disease, PLCC (Primary Liver Cell Carcinoma, a sort of cancer) alone accounted for 42.5% while liver cirrhosis (another form of cancer) accounted for 21.1% of the deaths.

In the two cancerous cases HBV (Hepatitis Virus) was the common cause. PLCC, which accounted for 491 out of 100,000 admissions in that teaching hospital, was the commonest malignancy on the medical wards and was the commonest cause of deaths from cancers in middle-aged and elderly Nigerians.

There is a need for control of hepatitis particularly hepatitis B virus infection through health education, active immunization of all new-born and other people at risk in Africa. Which is what we are trying to campaign for.

We still intend to run our online awareness campaign targeting the youth and using various new media and social media channels. This we hope will help us keep the virus in check and educate people on how they can be free of the virus just by vaccination. The Lagos state government is doing a very laudable job in the health care sector and we would like to commend the Government especially in the areas of child and maternal care. 

We would love to hear from people in other countries in Africa who have have lived with the Virus or have lost a loved one through the virus, particularly from Senegal and Gambia in West Africa, Morocco in North Africa, Kenya, Uganda and Tanzania in East Africa. We will also love to hear from our brothers in Southern Africa

Please do remember that, no member of this blog is a medical expert, we are just a team dedicated to enlightening our youths on the dangers of the Hepatitis Virus. I suffered it, i know how dangerous it is.

ABC's of Viral Hepatitis

A few days ago my wife came home with a shocking story about how a driver in her office had been asked to go for a full medical evaluation. A few days later he came back with the result dancing, he was HIV negative, a colleague of hers asked to see the result and there it showed he was positive to Hepatitis B.

'But you have hepatitis B'

'yes i see am. That one is no problem'

'My friend you need to go get your wife and children tested before you infect them'

'madam, that na no dey kill person' 

He ended the conversation, snatched the test results out of her hands and danced out of the office to continue his celebration with the other ignorant drivers in the office.

I wasn't surprised at all, i have seen well educated men people who have no idea what the virus does, do i blame them, maybe not. The governments in Africa have refused to do anything regarding the virus in terms of awareness. The best you see are banner displays in clinics and hospitals telling people they can get tested and get their results in 25 minutes. No one says why the virus is dangerous or why they should even get tested for it. I bet a lot of people in Africa see the disease as a flu virus which they think isn't life threatening as well

Hepatitis will kill you without you even knowing. A lot of people go years without symptoms. Save your life get tested. Surviving the virus is easy just get tested.

Viral hepatitis refers to infections caused by viruses that directly attack the liver. Chronic cases of viral hepatitis can lead to life-threatening liver cirrhosis (or scarring), liver failure and liver cancer.

The most common forms of viral hepatitis are hepatitis A, hepatitis B, hepatitis C, and hepatitis D.

 

Type of Viral Hepatitis	Mode of Transmission / Prevention
Hepat	Contaminated food and water / Preventable through vaccination
Hepatitis B	Infected blood, sex, and needles. From an infected mother to her newborn. Preventable through vaccination
Hepatitis C	Infected blood and needles. NO VACCINE
Hepatitis D	Must already have hepatitis B. Infected blood, sex, and needles. From an infected mother to her newborn. Get the hepatitis B vaccine.
Hepatitis E	Contaminated water. NO VACCINE

We are still on the drive to set Hepatitisafrica on a collision course with the dreaded virus especially on the streets of our beautiful continent. We assure you that we are not relaxed as the docility of our blog may imply. Our plan like we last stated is to create a massive awareness campaign starting online and moving to traditional media as we are able to get donors to support our course.

Hepatitis kills, but can be prevented, that is our message and everyone in Africa must know this, Governments must give the fight attention just as much as they give to Malaria and HIV.

We will succeed, Africa will be healed.

 WE ARE TAKING OUR FIGHT TO THE STREETS AND COMMUNITIES OF AFRICA

We like to apologise for our long silence on this blog, the hiatus was necessary as we needed to strategise on how to take our activities of informing and educating Africans about Hepatitis prevalence in our communities. We have over the few months o f our absence on the blog sought information on how endemic the disease is in sub-Saharan Africa and how most governments and non state actors spend so much resources on malaria, HIV/AIDS and other diseases that are not as prevalent as hepatitis. We find this really surprising and somewhat appalling that such a dangerous and highly infectious disease could be left to further ravage our people, our culture and our future.

So we have decided to take our campaign to the community, our plans are to use multimedia equipments, such as large outdoor screens which will be deployed in communities and programs such as local drama and documentaries stressing the effects and other informational needs when managing the spread and infection.

We recognize the challenges that await us, but we are determined to surpass these challenges and help curb the high infectious rate of hepatitis particularly hepatitis b in Africa. Our initial program plan is to run an awareness program for eighteen months starting in West Africa before spreading to other parts of Africa.

We will continue to use this medium to inform and appeal to our partners and supporters on issues regarding to cutting the infectious rate especially in new babies and women.

FOODS THAT MAY SAVE YOUR LIVER

As the few readers on this blog must have noticed, whatever I write regarding living through an acute infection of the hepatitis B virus is always through my personal experience. Which is the basis of the blog in the first place, use my experience as a survivor to educate and inform others especially in Sub-Saharan Africa.

One major factor that helped me beat the virus in record time was the strict diet I adhered to, I was sternly warned to stay away from high protein foods and oils. The funny thing was that while I was under observation before my lab report came out (it took about seven days) the doctor said he suspected I had contracted the virus but he needed to be sure, hence the test. And at that time, the only thing I had appetite for was beans and oatmeal, not knowing I wasn’t even supposed to be eating any proteins or oils. I got weaker and weaker and became jaundiced, my skin was yellow and my eyes were a mixture of orange and yellow. Mind you staying away from beans was a big problem for me, because even at good times I ate a lot of beans and meat. 

So I began to eat little proteins and no oil, I say little because there is no way one can totally eradicate proteins from meals, so I took milk and ate lots of vegetables. I got a little of stick for my menu, as all I ate was bread, lettuces, cabbages, broccoli, aloe Vera, spinach. I ate these with white rice and sometimes grilled fish, just when the longing for meat was too great for me to ignore, I went for fish, grilled to almost crunchy taste so oils from the fish will be dried up.

So basically my menu looked essentially like this

BREAKFAST

Vegetable sandwich with a glass skimmed milk

Or

Plain bread and tea ( with milk)

LUNCH

White Rice with carrots and cabbage

Or

White rice with lettuce, grilled fish

Or spaghetti with vegetable sauce

DINNER

Anything from eba (Nigerian meal made out of gritty flour from cassava) to semolina, amala or pounded yam. All these were eaten with vegetable soup prepared specially with only water and no oils at all. I also had a special stew invented by a friend; it was made out of tomatoes, pepper, carrots and water.

I need to warn that these meals were not always as enjoyable as I may be painting them to be, at various times during my convalescence I fought the temptation to eat meat, chips and plantains but the thought of permanent damage to my liver kept me in check.

There are no hard and fast rules to what you can eat though, just make sure you avoid alcohol, oils and foods with high proteins, also research for various traditional meals and drinks that are known to boost the recovery of the liver.