Invitation Letter to H.E. Madame Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf, President of Liberia

September 19, 2006

H.E. Madame Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf
President of the Republic of Liberia
Capitol Hill
Monrovia, Liberia

Dear President Johnson-Sirleaf

The officers and members of the Liberian History, Education and Development, Inc. (LIHEDE) bring you sincere greetings and best wishes in the Name of our Lord Jesus Christ. 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 civilizations. Malaria has been eradicated in the developed nations such as US, Japan, Israel, 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 main concern here is that malaria is currently unknown in the developed world because it was defeated in the developed world more than 40 years ago, so malaria shouldn’t be killing our people because there is a tested cure for malaria.

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 rate of malaria and malaria-related death in Liberia is 20,000 individuals per year, with an annual economic overlay of $40 million in treatment costs.

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 can see their faces as you read this letter, and 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. The economic effect of malaria is just as tragic, as it costs Liberia an estimated $40 million a year in lost gross domestic product.

Like slavery, the holocaust, genocides, and other societal ills that humanity overlooked, for which humanity apologizes later, we believe is the time for all Liberia’s daughters and sons to add words to the scourge because the technology to kill mosquitoes and disrupt their life cycle is available; the technology for appropriate chemoprophylaxes and chemotherapy is available.

Sadly, we now have both HIV/AIDS and malaria diseases to take on which all indications show will accelerate death in Liberia because anyone with HIV/AIDS who already has weakened immune system gets malaria that also targets destroying the red blood cells and elevating the body temperature will have little chance to live. This is the gorilla that is in the closet that a lot of people do not know. This is one of the reasons all of us must act now or we are going to loose our nation not only to foreigners who are engaging in illicit mining activities, taking over its territory, women, and jobs, but also we will kill ourselves for complacency and our inability to act on time. WeI believe that a nation of merely 3.2 million people should not let the combined forces of malaria and HIV/AIDS to reduce it to rubbles. We need to be smart here and come out in support of immediate malaria eradication with the cheapest treatment so that we cannot have a big mess in our hands tomorrow.

Madame president, never before in the history of humanity have humankind ever seen the presence of two deadly diseases complementing each other so well to decimate a complete nation as if they (these deadly diseases) were preprogrammed for maximum effect on humans. I think we all know that the human toll and suffering due to HIV/AIDS is already enormous, so we should combat malaria as quickly as we can to breakup this deadly combination of malaria and HIV/AIDS from wrecking havoc on our people.

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, University of Liberia, AME University, and Cuttington University College in Liberia.

The conference 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.

It is against this backdrop that we are seeking your physical leadership and beseeching that you kindly join us at the forefront of the "We want no more Malaria in Liberia" campaign. We make this request because you are our leader, a Daughter and a Mother of the world with a divine obligation and challenge to save these children lives. We, therefore, appeal to you to help launch the Malaria Awareness and Control campaign from the Executive Mansion.

For this purpose, we would be most grateful and humbled were to you to give opening remarks at the conference on December 14, 2006. We request further that you kindly utilize your good and divine office in articulating the urgent need for malaria control and possible eradication particularly in areas of Liberia devastated by this insidious disease.

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,

Dr. Syrulwa Somah
Executive Director-LIHEDE
somah@ncat.edu or info@lihede.org

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