International Fund for Africa and World Hunger: Day 8

IFA provides Phototherapy machines, which help prevent complications from jaundice.

On Day 8 of my 21 day diet for world hunger, I focus on the International Fund for Africa. International Fund for Africa (IFA) is an organization that aims to support all Africans – humans and non-humans alike.  IFA believes our human health, our treatment of each other and non-human animals, our relationships to Earth’s ecosystems and biosphere, our protection, management, and distribution of Earth’s wealth, and human relationships in a global community and economy are all directly connected to our fundamental attitudes about ourselves and how we fit in the natural world.

IFA promotes non-hierarchical and non-exploitative relationships between human beings and all other life forms.

I’ve had the fortunate opportunity to connect with Dr. Anteneh Roba, a physician and President of IFA.  This interview discusses the IFA and how the work of IFA is dedicated to creating change by providing health care, supporting veterinarians to better care for the animals of Africa, advocacy and promoting sustainable diets.

Q:  Please tell me about IFA

IFA is a nonprofit tax exempt organization based out of Houston.  We started three years ago with my sister.  The reason we did it is because we learned through our travels (we are originally from Ethiopia) of the disparity between our lives and those of other Africans.  We used to travel for fun and while there, having lived comfortable lives in the U.S. for 20 something years, we went back home and saw the disparity – the suffering – it bothered us so much we decided something had to be done.  And because we are both in the health care profession we thought focusing initially on health care was the way to go.

Helping Babies

IFA first focused mainly on two areas in health care: babies (neonates, newborns and preemies) and rural people.  Those are the two groups that seemed to us that were being hurt worse by lack of health care.  We started focusing on that.  Addis Ababa (Ethiopia too) has a young population where 50 percent of the population is under age 18. There was only one real neonatal unit in the whole city, which translates into the whole country.  And that unit was in poor condition.  Basically they had nothing.  They didn’t have a neonatal ICU – nothing.  For all practical purposes, they didn’t have a facility – anywhere in the country – to take care of babies.   That was the emphasis for us to get involved in this.

We got lucky. We found a doctor who was trained outside of Ethiopia, and she was a neonatologist – the only neonatologist in government run hospitals in the whole country.  This doctor opened up a small unit of two rooms, a couple of beds and one incubator.  It was not even working.  Basically, the second hospital was only two empty rooms a couple of dilapidated beds.  That’s it.  Remember, this is for a country of 80,000,000 people.  So we worked with her, and we decided we would start with a small unit to build her unit up, and help her throughout the next couple of years and try to build on this.  We started in 2007 helping her – bringing incubators, phototherapy equipment, machines, beds, EKG machines – all sorts of equipment.  Imagine this.  When this unit started, the mortality for the babies born there or who came to the hospital before dying was actually fairly reasonable for the general population at 17 percent, but still this doesn’t take into consideration that most of these babies are usually born healthy.  The ones that are sick – it’s different.  If you only take the ones that are sick, the mortality rate would be 90 percent. In less than a year and a half, when we helped give the hospital what the doctor needed, with her hard work, she got it down to 8 percent.  Two weeks ago she sent me an email with a graph showing it is down to 4 percent. This is from 17 percent – 4 percent.  This is without an ICU, by the way.  That’s the kind of difference you can make when a little organization and a couple of people who care enough to do something.

Last year after we gave her all this good stuff and were thrilled and everything was going well, I went to see the facility, and I saw a baby.  He’s on our video.  This baby for four days; every second of every minute of every hour of every day for four days was breathing around 80 a minute, suffocating in his own fluids, struggling to survive.  We were all watching him helplessly die in front of us.  The only reason he died was not because we didn’t know what to do, it’s not because we didn’t have the medical knowledge to take care of him, it’s because we didn’t have a ventilator – a machine that would have saved his life.  That is standard in the US.  We have ventilators for dogs in the US.  Or cats.  And this baby has to die because we could not provide him with a ventilator, and he died in front of us.  It tortured me.  When I start talking about this baby, I still get emotional and feel like crying.  It hurts so much to see a life being destroyed when there are so many people out there that can help.  I decided that then and there, one way or another, we’re going to build an ICU.  Within four months we received help from New York Mt. Sinai Medical School Department of Neonatology.  They gave a couple of ventilators, and I took money out of my own pocket to set up an ICU.  The only ICU in the whole country.  That’s what we’re doing with the neonatal unit.

We now are involved with a maternity hospital.  Imagine a maternity hospital that’s been around for 70 years that doesn’t not have a neonatal unit.  A mother delivers a baby and in case the baby is sick, she has to take a taxi or walk to the only other hospital with a neonatal unit.  The mortality rate for these babies was 80 percent when they are sick and have to go to another facility.  This facility had five to six beds and nothing else.  I promised them…and this week we’re sending about five incubators, five phototherapy machines and a couple of other things which will really start saving lives like the other facility.  That’s what we’re doing as far as neonatology is concerned.  And we are trying to build on this with other hospitals.  What we would like is to provide viable neonatal and pediatric units to all the hospitals in the capital city.  And we want to provide ICU’s so that babies don’t die needlessly from lack of equipment.

The photo at the top of this post is of a baby under a blue light (phototherapy machine) donated by IFA. Prior to IFA donating the light, babies would develop severe brain damage in some cases from the complications of neonatal jaundice and if left untreated it can progress to a condition called Kernicterus.

To learn more about the great work IFA is doing to help babies, you can check out this video.

Rural Medicine

The other thing IFA is doing is working on rural medicine.  This basically started off with a project in Northern Ethiopia, which is in the small town of Zemero.  Zemero Clinic serves 67,000 people, including many areas around town. One clinic for all those people.  Same scenario.  You walk in and they have next to nothing.  While I was there, a woman was brought in a makeshift wooden carrier by her family.  They were taking turns carrying her over a long distance.

They walked 16-17 miles to get to the clinic.  She was having a miscarriage.  They told her, there’s nothing we can do.  The HO (health officer) was trained as a nurse practitioner, that’s the equivalent here.  He had the training to do a DNC, but he couldn’t do it; because he didn’t have the equipment.  He didn’t have the basic stuff for it.  She was told to go back home, and she probably died.  I don’t know.  I have her on our video too.

We’re working with a hospital in California, St. Mary Medical Center, which is located in Apple Valley.  I showed this video to the CEO and other hospital officials.  They were so moved; they decided to help us get some basic equipment for the clinic.  We’re working on that to get it done.  Once that happens, we would like to follow it up by opening up other clinics in other parts of the country.  The problem with opening a rural clinic: now comes the issue of world hunger, water resources, availability of land, and climate change.  All these things come into play, because this facility we’re talking about, they have electricity but no water.  Water is a big issue because of the global warming phenomenon that is gripping the whole world – but affecting Africa probably double to triple of what is happening to other countries.  So, now we have to address the water issue and we hopefully have found a way to handle that.

Animal Health

IFA is also involved in animal health.  I’m a vegan and an animal rights activist.  Helping animals is a big part of my mission.  Unlike most other organizations, we combine human and animals.  We don’t separate the two.  We see them each as deserving of respect and of treatment that human beings get.  We work to bring some relief to their suffering.  They are suffering as much if not more than the people.  These are three areas we’re involved in, or plan to be involved in, with animals:

1)       Dogs are walking the streets, hungry and homeless and in some cases aggressive.  Rabies is a big issue too.  And because of these reasons, we want to help decrease the dog’s suffering and we want to help prevent the humans from being attacked.

March 2009 we started a nine month pilot project to spay, neuter and vaccinate about 1,200 dogs in one sub-city of Addis Ababa.  Our partners were Best Friends and Humane Society International (HSI).  We signed an agreement with the Addis Ababa city government.  They provided the staff and the building, and we brought equipment and trained Ethiopian Doctors on how to do spaying and neutering.  We also trained dog catchers.  This project ended in December 2009, and we will be negotiating with the city to extend the area of operations to eventually cover the whole city.  The idea is to bring down the number of homeless dogs – not by poisoning them with strychnine, which is a horrible way to kill any being.

Q:  Is that what is happening now?

Oh yeah.  They kill them with strychnine.  I don’t know if you’ve ever seen a video of a dog being killed from strychnine.  It will make you ill.  It is so horrible.  They start having uncontrollable seizures.  They start splitting out blood from their face.  Their organs contract until their organs explode.  They bleed out from everywhere.  It’s the most inhumane thing…we’re trying to stop that and convince the government that by spay and neutering, you decrease the number of dogs roaming the cities.  You have a cleaner, healthier city and a humane way of dealing with animal overpopulation.  That’s what we’re working on.

2)       The second thing we’re very intense about is trying to get help for horses and donkeys – probably the most abused animals on the continent.  They are so overworked.  Finally when their bodies give up, they throw them away to be killed by cars or eaten by hyenas.  IFA would like to open sanctuaries for donkeys and horses who are not sick enough to be euthanized and not strong enough to be work animals.  They can live out their years in peace.

3)       We also want to connect with veterinary schools in Ethiopia.  Ethiopia’s veterinary medicine focuses on large animals because they are the ones that bring in the money.  Veterinary medicine education in Ethiopia lacks proper training in small animal medicine which has lead to problems taking care of sick cats and dogs.

We’re trying to institute a curriculum that includes small animal medicine.  I’m working with a couple of vets here who do international work and who revise curriculum to fit third world country systems.  I’m trying to work with a couple of people. The one I’m really focused on working with is the head of SPCA of San Francisco, Jennifer Scarlett.  She does this kind of work, and is associated with organizations that go to different countries and fashions a curriculum that fits the country’s budget and everything else.  They make it work and they’ve done some fabulous work.  I’m trying to get her to come to Ethiopia and do this work with us.

4)       Our belief is that a compassionate world is a world that is kind to animals and to human beings.  This would be a world that is vegan.  We’re realistic enough to know that this we won’t happen in my lifetime.  At least we could start heading in that direction and to that end we’re involved in promoting veganism in Africa.  I attended a conference in West Africa sponsored by the International Vegetarian Union and went to Ghana where I was one of the speakers.  The whole idea is to promote veganism.  Vegetarian societies in West Africa actually go out and feed the hungry.  They take out vans where they provide vegan food give the hungry.  They do it in Ghana. They do it in Togo, Niger, Nigeria and many other places.  We’re trying to promote health organizations that are doing this.  We support the Ghanaian Vegetarian Society.  We send them materials and books to use to promote veganism.  Now we’re trying to work towards getting their services in Ethiopia.  Not only is it a humane way for animals and human beings – not only does it minimize the effects of global warming, but it’s the right way to go for health reasons.

I will be sharing the remainder of my interview with Dr. Roba on future posts.  Many thanks to Dr. Roba for your continued support of my efforts and for all you do!

Along came Day 8

I have little to report today.  I’m holding steady at 116 pounds, and the energy was quite good again.  I attended a dear friend’s birthday potluck – my husband was kind enough to cut the fudge squares prior to departing.  I made it through the event with only one minor hitch – a piece of my own vegan chocolate peanut butter fudge.

Throughout the day, I sat around a table displaying an assortment of foods, talking, enjoying the company of others.  While I was aware of the colorful display of fare in my presence, I noticed it without temptation.  I reflected on how odd that was.  Here, I hadn’t eaten all day.  I could feel some hunger, but no impulse.  For dinner, I had a fresh salad along with a delightful heap of lentils and rice delicately flavored with Indian spices (thanks David!).  But it was dessert that got me.  As the other guests were taking pieces of fudge, I saw one particular piece that had a divine dollop of peanut butter tucked within the chocolaty layers. I succumbed!  And it was sooooo worth it!  Alas, I have no caloric intake data to share tonight.  My guess is that it’s closely related to the other nights plus about 200 calories and oh… about…lots of fat for the fudge.

Peace is no mere matter of men fighting or not fighting. Peace, to have meaning for many who have known only suffering in both peace and war, must be translated into bread or rice, shelter, health, and education, as well as freedom and human dignity – a steadily better life. If peace is to be secure, long-suffering and long-starved, forgotten peoples of the world, the underprivileged and the undernourished, must begin to realize without delay the promise of a new day and a new life.
- Ralph J. Bunche

To support the organizations I write about in the series, purchase a World Hunger: Be the Solution Tee.  Proceeds from the shirt will go to the Small Planet Institute Fund and the International Fund for Africa.  All tees are sweat free and available in organic cotton.  To see the selection of World Hunger tees at Conducive’s Humanitarian & Human Rights Tee store, click here

To follow this Souljourn from the beginning, you can follow the links below:

21 Days for World Hunger:  Day 1

21 Days for World Hunger:  Day 2

21 Days for World Hunger:  Day 3

21 Days for World Hunger:  Day 4

21 Days for World Hunger:  Day 5

21 Days for World Hunger: Day 6

21 Days for World Hunger:  Day 7

21 Days for World Hunger: Day 9

21 Days for World Hunger: Day 10

21 Days for World Hunger:  Day 11

21 Days for World Hunger: Day 12

21 Days for World Hunger: Day 13

21 Days for World Hunger: Day 14

21 Days for World Hunger: Day 15

21 Days for World Hunger: Day 16

21 Days for World Hunger: Day 17

21 Days for World Hunger: Day 18

21 Days for World Hunger: Day 19

21 Days for World Hunger: Day 20

21 Days for World Hunger: Day 21

Solutions for World Hunger: Part I

Solutions for World Hunger: Part II

Solutions for World Hunger: Part III