Letter to Dr. Jendayi E. Frazer, Assistant Secretary, Bureau of African Affairs, U.S. Department of State

June 6, 2006

Dr. Jendayi E. Frazer

Assistant Secretary

Bureau of African Affairs
U.S. Department of State
2201 C Street NW
Washington, DC 20520

Dear Dr. Frazer:
 
The officers and members of the Liberian History, Education and Development, Inc. (LIHEDE) bring you sincere greetings and best wishes. LIHEDE is a US-based nonprofit organization located in Greensboro, North Carolina, comprising of Liberians and friends of Liberia dedicated to promoting education and development initiatives in Liberia.
             
By the time you would have finished reading this letter an estimated 12-15 Africans will be dead and 6-7 African women would have died from malaria, a curable disease that is older than Jesus Christ. Malaria has been eradicated in the developed nations such as US, Japan, Germany, Italy, Poland, and Romania with aggressive interventions, but than Africa was denied the same opportunity. Today, the citizens of these malaria free nations have a better quality of life, working, living long lives, building their nations, but our people in malaria endemic areas must poise for the sour pills of death each day.  
 
The World Health Organization (WHO) and other international health services organizations estimate that about 300 to 500 million Africans contract malaria each year, out of which about 3 million die per year. 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, happened on the African Continent. Equally important, we do not know of any place on this planet earth where a child dies every 30 seconds or where about 3 million people are buried annually from a curable infectious disease like malaria besides sub-Saharan Africa.  The economic effect of malaria is just as tragic, as it costs Africa an estimated $12 billion a year in lost gross domestic product.  In Liberia, 20, 000 lives are lost to malaria with an economic burden of $40,000 dollars annually.

 

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 cannot see their faces as you read this letter, but if you lean back and close your eyes, your mind will 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 will 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.

 

Like slavery, the holocaust, genocides, and other societal ills that humanity overlooked, for which humanity apologizes later, we believe is the time for you to add words to the scourge as it has done for slavery, the holocaust, genocides, HIV/AID, etc. because the technology to kill mosquitoes and disrupt their life cycle is available; the technology for appropriate chemoprophylaxes and chemotherapy is available.

Concerned about the impact of the debilitating disease on our country -Liberia, West Africa,  and committed to contribute to the control and eventual eradication of the disease in post-war Liberia, LIHEDE is also in the planning process to hold  the first post-war National Malaria Conference in Liberia in collaboration with governmental and non-governmental organizations, including the Liberian Ministries Health and Social Welfare,  Youth and Sports, Information, Culture Affairs & Tourism,  Bnettv.com of Canada, the U.S.-based Congress for Racial Equality, United Nations General Assembly (President), United Nations Millennium Project, the U.S.-based Kill Malaria Mosquitoes Now, West Coastal Aerial Applicators, Inc, Tr-Ac-Net,  the friends of Liberian organizations,  NC A&T State University, AME University, and Cuttington University College in Liberia.
 
The conference in Liberia will bring together the traditional and nontraditional health and medical practitioners to share knowledge and review the national malaria control and prevention strategies/policies and identify the appropriate combination of technologies that would eventually lead to the control of malaria, at the least, in Liberia. Our objective is to reduce malaria morbidity and mortality by 80 % in year 2010.
 
LIHEDE has planed a Pre-Malaria Conference aimed at only raising funds and awareness for the Malaria Eradication Symposium, but also for encouraging Liberians and friends of Liberia to make the trip to Liberia. It is against this backdrop that we are seeking your support to keynote our Pre-Conference Rally Dinner scheduled at the Student Union Hall, NCA&T State University on September, 30, 2006 at 6:00 P.M.  We make this request to kindly join us at the forefront of the "We want no more Malaria in Liberia" campaign not only because you know Liberia, but you are a Mother and a Daughter of the world with a divine obligation and challenge to save these children lives.

Thank you very much for considering our request and we prayerfully look forward to  your support for this humanitarian cause aiming at finding a lasting end to  malaria endemicity in Liberia and other poor countries.  We look forward to hearing from you at your earliest convenience.

Sincerely,

  
Syrulwa Somah, PhD.
Executive Director, LIHEDE
somah@ncat.edu or info@lihede.org

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