Invitation Letter to Honorable Jesse Jackson, Jr.

October 4, 2006

Honorable Jesse Jackson, Jr.

17926 South Halsted
Homewood, IL 60430-2013

Dear Congressman  Jackson, Jr

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 all human civilization.  Malaria, which has been eradicated in the developed nations such as US, Japan, Germany, Italy, Poland, Isreal, and Romania with aggressive interventions, adds to Liberia’s mosaic of problems. 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.

As you, our people have suffered great losses in terms of human life, human resources, capital investments, and infrastructural developments during the 14-year Liberian civil wars from 1989 to 2003. This decimated the lives of an estimated 400, 000 innocent people and half of the nations population is displaced.  As a result, Liberia’s social, economic, political, cultural, and educational institutions were severely destroyed and now await urgent rebuilding, repairs, or improvements in order to promote a better quality of life for the Liberian people. But reconstruction will not be rapid with not 20, 000 lives  being lost to curable malaria but money that supposed to go to development are wasted on curable. The economic effect of malaria is just as tragic, as it costs Liberia an estimated $20 million a year in lost gross domestic product.  Malaria is our slavery, 9/11, holocaust, genocide, apartheid, nuclear weapons, etc which are sending our people to their early graves.

You cannot see their faces, as you read this letter. But if you lean back and close your eyes, your mind will take you back to Liberia, 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. That is why we have come to you.

It is against this backdrop that LIHEDE is extending you an invitation to keynote our all important conference and bring a warm greetings to the people of Liberia during their first post-war National Malaria Conference in Liberia from December 14-19, 2006 at the University. Liberian President Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf will officially open the Conference and Her Majesty Queen Rena of Jordon will lead the advocacy to control and eradicate malaria.

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 its reconstruction efforts.  We look forward to hearing from you at your earliest convenience.  Please visit us at www.lihede.org.

Sincerely,

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

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