According to experts, the most cost-effective way to eradicate the world of disease, is immunisation. It’s also surprisingly cheap , with an estimated cost of $14.21 (in Sub-Saharan Africa) to $24.12 (in Europe and Central Asia). The Gates Foundation runs thorough checks on philanthropic projects aiming to immunise as many people as cost effectively as possible. Check out www.gatesfoundation.org for more information.
Aids
Despite millions being
poured into projects to resolve the issue, AIDs is still a big problem in
Africa. In her book, The Invisible Cure:
Africa, the West and the Fight Against AIDs, Helen Epstein, discusses how
although many of these projects have helped prevent AIDs, there is a more
effective solution. This solution
started in Uganda and Kagera where AIDs was once prevalent. The number of those affected by AIDs had reduced
by 80% in 2003 in Bukoba where AIDs had reached its peak just fifteen years
earlier. The AID Support Organisation (TASO)
played a huge part in this by doing the following:
Spreading the message that anyone can be affected by AIDs
Many believe that it is only promiscuous or the very poor who will be affected
by AIDs. Despite a huge campaign in
Botswana with billboards and many other adverts, making people aware of AIDs,
nobody talked about it. Africa is still
a very community-based country and the message makes more of an impact through
one to one conversations. By teams of
people going out and educating people throughout Uganda, it helped people
realise it could happen to them and they’d need to protect themselves from it.
Spreading the message of ‘zero grazing’ and loving carefully
In Africa
It’s not unusual for men
and women to have a number of partners. TASO spread the message of having safe
sex with a few partners and not having short terms flings with people you don’t
know to reduce the risk of AIDs.
Providing home-based care
Members of TASO soon realised that medication and supplies for those with
AIDs, could be more easily delivered to people at their homes rather than to
overcrowded, impersonal hospitals. Here,
people could also talk about the disease and gain emotional support as well as
physical care.
Reducing the stigma around AIDs
With little still known about this disease, there is still a fear of
contamination, causing many to shun those who have AIDs or even those who know
someone with the disease. TASO
home-based counsellors, taught people that it was safe to touch people who had
AIDs and that this disease was not a punishment from God, but a disease that
nobody deserved.
Spreading awareness of the positive effects of safe male circumcision
Although this is not a complete preventative, a lot of evidence has shown
that male circumcision can help to prevent the spread of AIDs. In 2006, researchers in South Africa, found
that circumcision reduces a man’s risk of contracting AIDs, by around 50%.
Log onto www.tasouganda.org to support one of the most effective AIDS organisations.
11. Help Stop World Diseases With Your Computer
As well as war and poverty, many people are also having to contend with many life threatening diseases. However, you can help just by turning on your computer! If you sign up, the World Community Grid uses unused computer cycles from your computer to help look into a cure for many diseases. Software programs will be used to perform the virtual chemistry experiments which will investigate how compounds and proteins will act with different drugs, according to the type of disease. With enough computing power, this screening can be done much more quickly than using conventional laboratory experiments. Existing computers available to the researchers would re-quire approximately 30 years to perform the screening. However, it is estimated that the power of World Community Grid can reduce the time required to one year or less. Information about the best candidate compounds will be published by the scientists, and this information will be available in the public domain for other scientists to build upon with their research. Further laboratory work using the best candidates identified by this project could lead to the development of better drugs to fight the disease in question.
By downloading the software from the World Community Grid you are enabling researchers to use the spare computer cycles to research into cures. Diseases researched using these cycles include cancer, aids and malaria. Log onto www.worldcommunitygrid.org for more information and to download a copy of this lifesaving software for free.
Nobody likes the thought of research using animals but many support it in the hope that it will help to fight diseases that occur all too often in humans. However, there is a growing amount of evidence which shows that testing on animals isn’t an accurate way to determine cures for diseases in humans:
1. Animals don’t get the same diseases as humans and even when they are given similar ones, their bodies deal with them in a completely different way to humans. in fact, of the 30,000 diseases humans can get, 1.16% of those are similar to those that animals can get. It’s been possible to cure mice of cancer since the 1960s because of all the experiments that have been done on them, but this has made no difference to humans and the cancers that they can get.
2. There have been variations in results from animal testing according to different breeds and even genders. For example, alkaloid can be digested by cats and dogs in quantities of 100mg and they’ll still survive whereas just 5mg consumed by a human will prove fatal. Hemlock, which Socrates drank himself to death with, can be digested safely by horses, goat, sheep and mice.
3. As the animals used are much smaller than humans, a formula ratio has to be estimated and has never proven to be accurate.
4. Prescription drugs are currently the fourth biggest killer in the UK.
5. Four out of ten patients who are given pills suffer from painful side effects or even death.
There are a growing number of doctors and scientists who are coming out and condemning animal research but it continues because it is the cheapest method.
By supporting humane research into fighting diseases, you can really make a difference to the lives of people and animals. Look into supporting the Dr Hadwen Trust (www.drhadwentrust.org) and Europeans For Medical Progress (www.safermedicines.org).