An Appeal to the Sons and Daughters of Liberia 

An Appeal to the Sons and Daughters of Liberia 

Fellow Liberians: politicians, lawyers, doctors, business men and women, educators, combatants, journalists, government officials – I salute you. I am delighted to have this opportunity to speak to you about an urgent topic. ( Please see flyer attached here .)

As a child growing up in Kokoyah, Upper Bong County , I lost more than 15 of my friends, along with three brothers and two nephews, to malaria. I barely survived this disease myself. I know you, too have similar stories. As you read this letter, tens of thousand of our people are bed-ridden in Liberia and in displaced persons' camps around the globe, due to 14 years of civil wars that have made them even more vulnerable. Of course, you cannot see the faces of these children from where you sit or stand to read this appeal. But wherever you sit or stand you can lift the spirit of these children from their malaria dungeon to the hope train that will lead them to the new frontiers of education, housing, and peace of mind.

I find it inconceivable, unconscionable and reprehensible that the world can endlessly talk about relatively minor human rights issues like the death penalty for killers or reading emails to prevent terrorism – but then can completely ignore the way developed nations violate Africans' most basic human rights every day, by preventing them from using readily available methods to control or even eradicate this deadly disease.

Since Liberia was founded 158 years ago, malaria has been one of the principal killers of its people: 4,500 Liberian children die each year from the disease. Across the African Continent, an estimated 500 million people contract malaria every year, up to 2 million die (half of them children), and tens of thousands are left with irreversible brain damage. Malaria has killed 50 million people, which is ten times more than AIDS over the past 15 years. Yet malaria is preventable. This terrible death toll is equivalent to sending 27 fully loaded Boeing 757 jetliners crashing into a mountain every single day, year after year. Other insect-borne diseases kill still more thousands of our people every month. The economic effects of these diseases are just as tragic, as they cost nations of the poor African Continent over $12 billion a year in lost gross domestic product.

What makes Liberia 's situation especially grave is its topography, rainforests, rainfall and the configuration of its capital city around a major wetland. Malaria is also a major cause of our nation's (and continent's) enduring poverty, because malaria victims often cannot work, attend school, cultivate their fields or care for their families for weeks or months at a time. It is essential that you and I develop and implement integrated programs for our nation that will rapidly and permanently bring malaria under control.

In the 1950s and 1960s, the United States , Europe, Canada and Australia used dichlorodiphenyltrichloroethane (DDT) to wipe out malaria and typhus in their countries. We should be able to do the same – or use other effective and efficient pesticides, some of which cost less than 25 or 50 cents an acre to apply. But we are prevented from doing this, and our people are still dying from these diseases, when the Stockholm Convention makes it clear that DDT may be used by countries that have a malaria problem. As a nation and as caring, moral people, we cannot afford such misplaced concerns, especially when no other method works as well as DDT or the pesticides Americans are using in Florida and other states to control mosquitoes and the diseases they carry.

As the parable goes, When the rope is not around your neck, it is easy to say pull it. Non-Africans, sitting in their air-conditioned homes and malaria-free environments, can afford to worry about DDT contributing to thinner bird eggshells or finding traces of DDT in animal or human bodies. They tell us we should worry about these things, too. But we have much bigger concerns.

We worry about losing more of our babies – the future of our nations – to malaria. Imagine what would happen if four children were being killed by malaria every minute in the USA , France , Germany or Japan ! Those nations would not tolerate it. They would use the same pesticides they used 40 years ago to get rid of this disease. They did it then, and we should be able to do it today! Our children's lives depend on it, and their lives are worth as much as American or European lives.

As the Executive Director of Liberian History, Education and Development, Inc. (LIHEDE), I find it compelling that this year's symposium will address the need for lasting, effective control and eventual eradication of malaria problems in Liberia – just as developed nations like the United States and Europe have done. At this symposium, we will explore cutting-edge technologies and treatments to end the suffering of the Liberian people. The symposium's goal is two-fold.

First, we must tell the world that we are sick and tired of seeing our children die daily from a disease that is readily preventable. Second, want people who are interested in find solutions to the malaria problem and not those who are comfortable with is going in Africa and write books to make their money at our detriment. The book that are of interest is that which explain how flies are chase out of Africa and Liberia has stopped spending 20-25 million dollars annually on malaria. Finally, we must evaluate every available technology and methodology that can actually help us achieve significant and lasting reductions in malaria disease and death tolls; set the stage for launching effective malaria reduction and eradication programs in Liberia; resolve to overcome political obstacles; and provide lessons for the rest of Africa in all these vital health, environmental, economic and human rights areas.

This is why I am looking you right in the eye and appealing to you as a friend, brother, and fellow Liberian and African. Even as the whole world community leadership has failed to take on the malaria issue by focusing on malaria resistance treatment, bed nets, roll-back-program as opposed to the root of the problem, which is prevention, we must appeal to the conscious of good people who are afraid and have allowed unspeakable things to happen to join the freedom from Malaria to the new frontier of malaria freed of Liberia. Let us bring our plight before their eyes now---that mosquitoes do not only bite when you are laying bed. If the world has failed to see, come let use point it out that in Africa our children play out door from 5:00 p.m. in the evening up to 8: 00 p.m. Therefore, the overly promoted bed net is not the answer because there useless in outdoors or when in root from the farm (in the evening). All roads lead to North Carolina A&T State University in Greensboro , on July 29-30, 2005. Please join us.

I know this is a daunting task. But I am convinced that your support will go a long way toward ensuring that we can accomplish this goal – that we can eliminate this terrible epidemic in the new republic of Liberia , and all of Africa . Do not let anything dim your hope and enthusiasm. Join us!

Tell your friends, pastors, bishops, senators, congressmen and state representatives that malaria kills four children every minute in Sub-Saharan Africa. Tell them we cannot, and will not tolerate it any longer.

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