The New African Perspective: Growth and Transformation

The New African Perspective: Growth and Transformation
The New AU building in Addis Ethiopia

Sunday, September 30, 2012

It is Immune Suppression Stupid: HIV enables the spread of opportunistic infections!

It is Immune Suppression Stupid, and the Human Labs that created HIV, not Africa

 Are you serious?  HIV facilitates all sorts of opportunistic diseases and Salmonela is no different. But Africa did not create the HIV Virus, that is made in one of the US Scientific labs!

 The real truth is that any infectious disease is deadly in a compromised immune environment, that is the survival of the fittest in action.  Tuberculosis, Salmonella or any Opportunistic infections can be deadly in an environment of immune compression.

The real fantasy of this article is falsely claiming that the HIV epidemic started in Africa where the facts indicate USA, the Sanfrancisco and New York Gay and Drug Community carried the virus and it was introduced to the human consciousness from the United States.  Africa can take the claim of creation for all humanity and life on the planet and the new world can easily be accredited for the HIV Pandemic and new zoonotic diseases.

Let us share the blame and glory based on evidence and facts.  Dr BMJ, www.GlobalBelaiJesus.com
http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=6269924755853240716#editor/target=post;postID=9148935254594280587


30 September 2012 Last updated at 13:19 ET

HIV 'made' new deadly Salmonella - study

By James GallagherHealth and science reporter, BBC News
SalmonellaA new strain of deadly Salmonella may have emerged in the wake of HIV

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An epidemic of a deadly strain of Salmonella has swept across the whole of Africa by "taking advantage" of the spread of HIV, according to an international team of researchers.
Their study, published in Nature Genetics, is the first to identify the separate cases as a single epidemic.
One in four people in Africa infected with the strain died.
It is thought to be the first time a single strain of an infection has spread so widely in the wake of HIV.
Cases of this form of invasive non-typhoidal Salmonella have been recognised in Africa for more than a decade. It causes fever, headaches, respiratory problems and sometimes death.

“Start Quote

It quite clearly parallels the emergence of HIV in Africa”
Prof Gordon DouganSanger Institute
The research team analysed the genetic code of 179 batches of Salmonella from different parts of Africa and the rest of the globe. Using techniques similar to a large-scale DNA paternity test, they were able to construct the strain's "family tree" and then how it spread.
It happened in two waves. The first started in south-eastern Africa about 52 years ago and the second wave started 35 years ago from the Congo Basin.
Prof Gordon Dougan, from the Sanger Institute in Cambridge in the UK, told the BBC: "It quite clearly parallels the emergence of HIV in Africa."
HIV attacks the immune system and leaves people more vulnerable to other infections. It is thought the strain of Salmonella Typhimurium took advantage of this weakness and spread. The research team said the bacterium was given the chance to "enter, adapt, circulate and thrive".
There is poor monitoring data for the disease across the whole of the continent, but Prof Dougan said it was affecting "thousands and thousands" of people and that 98% of adult cases were in people with HIV.

“Start Quote

It's actually quite a huge problem and it seems to be getting worse because there are many susceptible people, it's got a grip in Africa”
Prof Brendan WrenLondon School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine
He said this spread of Salmonella Typhimurium had been different to that of other infections commonly associated with HIV, as it had been a single epidemic "people were completely unaware" of and there "were not really any other examples" of that happening.
Dr Melita Gordon, a gastro-enterologist at the University of Liverpool, said: "It's the first time this has been described right across a continent in such an obvious way."
She added: "The highest mortality associated with the disease is 80%. What's happened over the years is mortality has fallen down and down and down to between 20% and 25% as doctors inside Africa recognise it."
The genetic analysis also showed the strain was resistant to the first choice antibiotic, chloramphenicol, which means more expensive drugs would be needed to treat the infection.
It is thought that improving HIV treatment across Africa could reduce the prevalence of the Salmonella infection, as it would reduce the number of people with vulnerable immune systems. However, the researchers urged "vigilance" in case the Salmonella strain mutated again to become able to infect people with healthy immune systems.
Commenting on the study, Prof Brendan Wren, from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, told the BBC: "It's actually quite a huge problem and it seems to be getting worse because there are many susceptible people, it's got a grip in Africa.
"HIV, I think it's fair to say, provided a springboard for it to take off."
However, he thought the disease was "near its peak" as HIV was more controlled in other continents giving it little room to spread.

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Thursday, September 27, 2012

HEAL 4 Productive LIFE

HEAL 4 Productive LIFE daily message.  

 We are what we eat.  Every day we shed about 4 billion cells and regenerate another set of new 4 billion cells.  

 Healthy Eating to replace 4 billion cells per day.  The quality of the new cells depends on the quality and balance of nutrition we take daily.  Half a plate of fruit and vegetables, complemented by another half plate of protein (egg, milk, beans, etc) and carbohydrate determines the quality of the new cells we generate every day! 

 Active Living.  We will discuss what we mean by HEAL, that is productive Active living supported by 10,000 steps per day and isotonic and isometric exercises at least three times a week for 30 minutes.  

 Productive living means producing innovative and creative solutions to the daily challenges and opportunities of our lives. This varies from person to person, from time to time.  As such it is the challenge and opportunities of daily life.

 Belai Habte-Jesus, MD, MPH, www.GlobalBelaiJesus.com
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Saturday, September 1, 2012

The benefits of public morning: Public Funeral is back in Ethiopia after 40 years of Revolutionary abscence





Public Grief a sign of re-socialization of a nation!

 Expression of feelings be it happiness or sadness is the central piece of our Autonomic Nervous System, the primary automatic part of our nervous system, organized under sympathetic and Non Sympathetic Nervous Systems.

 Our emotions, our passion, and our vital functions such as breathing, heart beat, gastro-intestinal and renal system are regulated by this highly complex autonomic nervous system.  In effect the quality  of our life depends on the balance of the Cerebral and Autonomic Nervous System.

 Stressful events are managed by both the autonomic and non autonomic systems.  Expressing happiness, sadness and excitement as well as depression is the normal emotional function of every day life.

 Public sharing of these emotions is additionally critical as it gives a sense of togetherness, communication and sharing that makes us all social animals.

 Dictatorships and all forms of inhumane systems interfere with these normal human social interactions which as serious individual and collective tragedy.  Ethiopians for almost 40 years were not able to express freely their sorrows during the revolutionary military and communist era.

 The sudden massive expresion of grief during the recent death of the Patriarch and the PM is can only be explained by this sudden re-ownership of the long held tradition of culture of the country.

 That is why we say, public grief is a good sign of re-socialization of the nation!

Ethiopia has had a long line of leaders dying in secret, hidden behind closed doors, but not a long history of funerals.
In 1913, one of Ethiopia's most renowned emperors, Menelik II, died. His death remained a secret until 1916 when officials finally announced that he had succumbed to a stroke years earlier.

Haile Selassie, Ethiopia's last emperor, officially died of natural causes in 1975, but is widely believed to have been murdered by the brutal regime of Mengistu Hailemariam,
 suffocated and buried under a toilet.
Last month, Ethiopian Prime Minister Meles Zenawi died of an unknown illness after a mysterious, two month-long disappearance from public view, and will be buried on Sunday in the first state funeral for a leader in over 80 years.

The cloud of secrecy and gossip that has surrounded the deaths of several Ethiopian leaders stems from a desire to ensure a stable succession, according to analysts.

"If the death is announced there is the fear that it can provoke a lot of trouble because different people can ask for the throne," said Estelle Sohier from the University of Geneva, author of a book on Menelik.
"To hide a death of a leader is a way to spare time, to save time, to settle the succession," added Sohier.

Though Meles' death was announced hours after he died in a Brussels hospital, the secrecy surrounding his illness led some to question whether the government was getting its house in order to ensure a smooth transition.

Days after Meles died, the government confirmed that deputy Prime Minister Hailemariam Desalegn will take over power until national elections in 2015.

Author Michela Wrong said this pattern of secrecy is common following the sudden deaths of leaders throughout Africa, not only in Ethiopia.

"The ruling elite is motivated by the desire to maintain the status quo, from which it benefits. It wants stability," she said.

Sohier draws parallels between the death of Menelik whose successor was disputed among the royal family, and the death of Meles, whose clear successor was not known until the government confirmed Hailemariam's takeover.

Ethiopia's constitution states the deputy will take over in the absence of the prime minister, but does not specify what happens in the case of the leader's death.

Meles will be given a state funeral on Sunday, the first offered to a reigning head of state since the death of Empress Zawditu in 1930.

"This is the first time for 82 years that Ethiopians have had an opportunity to show what they think about their ruler," said Patrick Gilkes, an Ethiopia-based historian and author of "The Dying Lion," which examines feudalism in Ethiopia.

The gesture solidifies his memory in national history, pointing also to the fact that Ethiopians have not had a chance to mourn the loss of a leader in nearly a century following a series of rocky regime changes, observers say.

No public mourning was staged after Haile Selassie's death while Mengistu, who was deposed by Meles in 1991, is still alive in exile in Zimbabwe.

Immediately after Haile Selassie died, many people in Addis were "very sad" said Ethiopian journalist Tsegaye Tadesse, 78, who was in Addis Ababa at the time, but Mengistu's regime did not permit a public funeral.

"There was an outpouring of grief, yes, but it was limited," he said.
Haile Selassie's remains were exhumed in 1992 and a public funeral was held though the government did not hold a state funeral for the late emperor, who was buried in Addis Ababa's Trinity Cathedral, where Meles too will be buried.

The decision to bury the former Marxist leader in the same cathedral as Haile Selassie, deceased patriarchs of Ethiopia's Orthodox Church and war martyrs, suggests that authorities want Meles remembered as a national hero.

"Eulogising late leaders, while glossing over their very obvious faults, is something you see across the world," Wrong added. "The leaders who were being vilified up until a moment ago suddenly take on a new, golden aura."

Meles, while credited with widespread economic growth was also chided by critics for his human rights record.

But Tsegaye said Meles deserves a place in history among Ethiopia's finest for the development he brought to Ethiopia.

"We have got top leaders like Menelik II, Haile Selassie, but Meles, he is in my opinion even better than the others," he said.



The opposition perspective of the cause of death for Zenawi and their interpretation of its potential implication needs careful deliberation and research.  

Here is the first attempt to explain the cause of death and the reasons for the secrecy of when and how death took place between 18 May 2012, 14 July 2012 and eventual announcement on 21st August 2012.

To-date there is no factual information on what condition MZ was suffering for how long and how did he eventually die.  This is a great loss for the historical and medical history of Ethiopia where its PM dies of a secretive disease in a secretive way.

Hence giving rise to such outreageous claims and speculations.  We might get the truth some time in the future, but the damage is already done with such speculations raging in the minds of friends and foes of Ethiopia.  All the same, it is worth deliberating on this stories until we get to the facts and the truth!


The Cause of Zenawi's Death and Its Impact 
By Selam Beyene (Ph.D.) | September 1, 2012
In the absence of a legitimate autopsy report, a death certificate or a credible official statement relating to the reason behind the hospitalization and eventual death of the former ruler of one of the most populous countries in Africa, there are compelling medical and circumstantial arguments to suggest that the episode of May 18, 2012, in which the valiant Abebe Gellaw confronted Zenawi, might have played a major role in accelerating the demise of the dictator.

Prior to August 21, 2012, when the TPLF cadres that are currently terrorizing the country announced his death, Zenawi had not been seen in public for several weeks, and there had only been conflicting reports about his conditions or whereabouts issued by the Woyanne propaganda machinery.Nonetheless, there were several pieces of circumstantial evidence that indicated the deteriorating condition of Zenawi's health in the aftermath of the May 18th encounter with Abebe Gellaw. 

Most notably, immediately after the confrontation, Zenawi reportedly failed to attend a function at the Ethiopian Embassy in Washington, D.C., that was organized to express gratitude to his followers in the Diaspora. A few weeks later, he was seen as a ghost-like creature during his meeting with Chinese officials at the G20 summit in Los Cabos, Mexico. 

The final confirmation of his ailment later came when he failed to attend an African Union summit in Addis Ababa in July.

While there is no conclusive medical evidence to indicate that shock can actually kill a person, there is ample literature to surmise that it can impact the cardiovascular system, and thereby exacerbate a deteriorating or compromised condition leading to death.

In the medical literature, fear and stress are known to cause substantial biochemical conflicts between the sympathetic and parasympathetic responses when a person is faced with an imminent danger, the so-called fight-or-flight phenomenon. In particular, shock, as an extreme stress reaction, ensues when the stress level is so high that the endocrine and nervous systems are unable to cope with the circumstance. People who have underlying health problems may, therefore, experience fatalities as a result of the exacerbation of these conditions.

In their book, Gleitman et al. (2004)1 report that, in the face of extreme stress, catecholamine hormones, such as adrenaline, trigger physical reactions, including acceleration of heart and lung action, constriction of blood vessels, and shaking. For someone with cardiovascular problems, a huge release of catecholamines can lead to instant or eventual death.
Some of the above events were, of course, observed in Zenawi's reaction to the unexpected challenge by Gellaw. In one of his weekly commentaries, Alemayehu G. Mariam poetically captured the moment as follows:

".... For seven seconds, the mighty Zenawi zoned out into a catatonic trance like the patrons of opium dens. For a fleeting moment, he seemed almost comatose. His head was bowed, his back hunched, his chin drooped, his lips quivered and his eyes gazed vacantly at the floor just like the criminal defendant who got handed a life sentence or worse. A close-up video showed him breathing heavily, almost semi-hyperventilating. His pectoral muscles heaved spastically under his shirt. An imminent cardiac event?"2
For a dictator who, distrusting the people he ruled with an iron fist, had insulated himself with one of the most skilled and highly armed protective security details in the world; for a dictator who, out fear and insecurity, had never interacted or mingled with the people that he had so despised, mocked and disparaged during his two decades of tyranny; the sudden outburst of such dreaded phrases as “Meles Zenawi is a dictator!” in that world forum was a shocking experience that his frail body had not been accustomed to or able to withstand.

Although the secretive TPLF ruling party never revealed the general health condition of the dictator while he was in office, rumors did abound about his poor health resulting from a slapdash life-style, including smoking, drinking and other substance abuse – all risk factors for cardiovascular and oncological complications.

In view of the indirect association of death and shock in a compromised person, and given the poor state of Zenawi's health prior to the event, it is not beyond the realm of possibilities to surmise that the May 18th confrontation might have contributed to his death.

If Gellaw’s heroic action had a role in the death of the dictator, then it would explain in part why the TPLF cadres kept the condition of the late dictator and the bona fide cause of his death a highly guarded secret. Manifestly, any suggestion that the event of May 18th contributed to the demise of the dictator would hearten others to follow suit and challenge the repressive rule of the TPLF. Most importantly, if there was the perspicacity that one person could contribute in a momentous way to bring down a vicious dictator, despite his ostensibly impenetrable security details, the millions of oppressed citizens would be emboldened and an organized mass uprising would be inevitable to end the monopoly enjoyed by the minority thugs on the nation’s political and military power structure and scarce resources.

The North Korean style funeral ceremony and the idolization of the deceased is also part of an overall orchestrated stratagem to demonstrate spurious invincibility and to thwart any semblance of vulnerability. The attempt to paint a larger-than-life picture of the deceased despot, and the much advertized claim that he was a respected leader in the world forum is, of course, at variance with the low esteem in which the despot was held by world leaders in private conversations. 

As revealed in the United States diplomatic cables leak, he was in fact a light weight in the eyes of diplomats and heads of states. Contrary to the myth propagated by his henchmen, in the opinion of German Chancellor Angela Merkel, for example, he was an "economic illiterate", while in the assessment of George W. Bush he was nothing more than “an errand boy”. What the TPLF cadres are doing in his death validates what Former US ambassador Donald Yamamoto observed when the dictator was alive: a "democratic deficit" example, and someone “begging to get world attention to have his ideologies acceptable.”3

The death of the dictator a short while after his encounter with Abebe Gellaw may serve both as a metaphor and as a template for the demise of tyranny in Ethiopia. Authoritarianism inherently is an aberration in human society, and hence a sick political system. So, as in the case of Zenawi, a major shock could unavoidably trigger the collapse of the system, as has been recently observed in the Middle East and other regions ruled by tyrants. This shock could come in the form of popular uprisings, concerted resistance by the people, organized lobbying by the Diaspora to cut the supply line of foreign aid, or internal fractures spearheaded by pro-democratic factions.

The only way out of this predicament for TPLF rulers is to recognize and respect the will of the people to live in freedom and liberty. In the short term, they should open up the political space and invite all opposition leaders for a genuine dialog to chart a framework for a democratic Ethiopia in which individual rights will be unconditionally respected, and all citizens will have equal opportunities in the pursuit of happiness and determination of the government of their choice.

If the TPLF insists in propagating the failed autocratic, ethnic-based and corrupt policies of the late dictator, then all freedom loving Ethiopians back home and in the Diaspora should rise in unity and give the aberrant system a shock from which it will never recover. It is a mathematical impossibility for a minority group to dream it would be able to perpetuate its repression over eighty million people for much longer.

It is time for the West to refrain from continuing to nurture the activities of a criminal regime and derailing the aspirations of the people to live in freedom and prosperity. In this regard, pro-democracy groups and individuals in the Diaspora have a historic role to play and influence donor nations and institutions.



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