Happy New Year! We thought we'd start 2010's blog with a post from the renowned TED conference. In this provocative talk, Andrew Mwenda, a well known Ugandan journalist, asks us to reframe the "African question." He asks us to acknowledge the failures of foreign aid, to look beyond the media's stories of poverty, civil war and helplessness, and instead focus on opportunities for creating wealth through business and sustainable, self-governing infrastructure. Click to watch and let us know what you think!
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Integrative Medicine Foundation
What if we told you that effective treatments for malaria, using traditional medicine, exist in East Africa? What if you knew we had witnessed its success first hand? Would you want to learn more?
Despite extensive international attempts to fight malaria in sub-Saharan Africa, the disease continues to ravage local communities. 3,000 people die each day from malaria. That’s one person every 30 seconds, 75% of which are children. Malaria costs sub-Saharan Africa $12 billion every year in lost productivity, making the disease one of the single largest roadblocks to sustainable development.
Why now?
The fight against malaria requires a new approach, which is why we are working to help local communities in East Africa leverage one of their greatest untapped natural resources in this battle: indigenous knowledge and traditional medicine.
Traditional medicine offers powerful cures. It’s also affordable, readily available and culturally accepted. What’s more, supporting the research and development of traditional medicine encourages African solutions to African problems, empowering communities to create their own sustainable economies.
Why us?
* We are the only NGO working to develop traditional medicine on the ground in East Africa.
* We are the only NGO working to clarify best practices in medicine through observational and clinical trial research.
* We are committed to protecting traditional healers’ natural resources and intellectual property rights.
* We are dedicated to ensuring equitable benefit-sharing for healers and their communities.
How you can help
We are launching a campaign to fund an observational study of a remarkable treatment for malaria. Rooted in traditional African medicine, we've seen first-hand evidence that this plant-based treatment rapidly eradicates symptoms of infection– without the risk of drug resistance or toxicity that characterizes other treatments.
Please join Integrative Medicine Foundation as a founding supporter. Let us put your money to work building healthy communities and effective, sustainable systems of medicine in East Africa.
Whether you’re able to give $5,000, $1,000, $500, $100 or just $25 – no amount is too small in contributing to Integrative Medicine Foundation’s fight against malaria.
To contribute to the success of this groundbreaking malaria cure, please click here or send a check to Integrative Medicine Foundation, 55 Fifth Avenue, 19th Floor, New York, NY 10003.
Recently I sat with my grandmother at our rural home outside Kisumu, Kenya to at least spend some sweet time with her. I had an eye problem and it didn’t take her long to notice it. She got up, left me there and headed towards the gate. By the gate was a very short and ugly tree, which to me had never seemed useful in any way and I had always fought for it to be uprooted. She cut a branch off that tree, and said “Lay it out to dry, burn it and put your face in the smoke. Make sure the smoke gets into your eyes.” I didn’t believe in what she said, but I had to do it to make her happy.
It worked like magic! After some time my eyes were okay. My grandmother had given me herbs before, which worked, to cure stomachache, backache and sores. And so it occurred to me: our ancestors lived and survived without hospitals, doctors or even scientific medicine or vaccines. What did they do when they fell ill? The answer is so obvious! They used traditional medicine.
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Given all the recent media attention focused on the H1N1 influenza pandemic and its vaccine, I would like to dedicate our opening blog entry to understanding vaccinations in a deeper way. As Integrative Medicine Foundation’s medical director, a parent and a practitioner of naturopathic medicine and Classical Five Element acupuncture, the issue of vaccines constantly arises, both personally and professionally. Many patients come to me asking about the H1N1 vaccine, so I thought it would be helpful to address a few issues in response to this year’s biggest health scare.
By definition, vaccinations involve the injection of a weakened or inactivated virus or bacteria in the hopes of stimulating a specific immune system response against the virus or bacteria, thereby preventing disease. This sounds good in theory, however this definition alone fails to elucidate the main principle underlying vaccinations: to give a person a mild version of an illness.....
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