Hello Earthlings (and any Martians out there lurking our planet),
congratulations on making it through the second week of 2015. With
the hustling and bustling of everyday life, this may seem like a trivial
accomplishment however, one just has to turn on their TVs or go on the internet
to see that many people were not as fortunate. Everyday
people across the planet are faced with numerous experiences ranging from deaths,
hardships, victories and so much more.
Some of these events are shown repeatedly by media outlets while many are
trivialized and barely shown, thus making billions of people far removed from
these events. In light of this, “Watin de Apin” (meaning what is
happening) will be a weekly post highlighting some of the good, the bad and the ridiculous
events of the week with commentaries from me of course J. On that note, let us dive
into events for the week of January 4 - 10, 2015.
The Good
Bye, Bye to Ebola in
Liberia
It was indeed great
news to hear that the Ebola situation in Liberia will soon be history. Liberia
has gone from having the most Ebola cases with a peak of 300 new confirmed
cases per week to currently having the lowest among the three countries with eight
new confirmed cases per week. In the
true West African spirit, my Liberian folks took to the streets to dance Ebola away, to celebrate this accomplishments. Check out the video below.
Tell me what’s not to
like about the unbreakable spirits of Africans.
Nothing, I repeat nothing can break our Spirits, not War, not Ebola, not
Stigmatization!
Further putting Liberia in the good book for this week, is
the president’s decision to send some of its Ebola health workers to help neighboring
Sierra Leone which continues to be ravaged by Ebola with 248 new confirmed cases per week. This is
very selfless of Liberia considering the fact that they themselves have barely
fully recovered. For this selfless act, Sierra Leoneans, myself included are
grateful. In like manner Kenya and South Korea have decided to send health
workers to Sierra Leone. Thank you to both countries (my question though is
what took you so long? J
). I am all for other countries sending aid to nations in emergency health
situations, however it seems like there continues to be a lack of aid coordination
in Sierra Leone, without which no
progress is likely.
New antibiotic
Discovery
Our next good event of the week happens to be the discovery
of Teixobactin, which is the first new antibiotic in nearly 30 years. It would be able treat many common bacterial
infections such as tuberculosis, septicaemia and C. diff. As a public health professional this is great
news for me considering the fact that there is an increasing bacteria
resistance to current antibiotics (bacteria these days refuse to be killed easily!). The
annoying aspect though is that you and I have to wait 5 years for it be available
L
Ebola Vaccines to the
frontline
On Wednesday January
9th, it was announced that two “promising” Ebola vaccines would be
soon be tried on the frontlines of Ebola i.e. on my Sierra Leonean, Liberian
and Guinean people. I seriously don’t know whether to categorize this as
good, bad or ridiculous. This might just turn out to be a breakthrough in the
fight against Ebola thus making it good. However the fact that only limited
trials on volunteers were conducted prior to its upcoming test on thousands of people in these three West African countries makes it a recipe for disaster, if all doesn't go well. This is particularly worrisome given that it is still
unclear how much protection against Ebola or how long, the vaccines might
protect. Added to this, we are still unclear about what the side effects are. Why, oh why do my people always have to be guinea
pigs for big pharma?
The Bad
Paris Attack
The first bad event of the week comes to us via France,
where three gun men attacked and shot dead 12 people at the Paris office of
French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo in an apparent militant Islamist attack.
This was followed by two subsequent attacks that resulted in a total of 17
deaths. Why did I even have to explain all of that, I am sure everyone except
those living under rocks would have I heard about this considering it how much it
has been shown by the media. In the spirit of solidarity the whole world with social
media (#JesuisCharlie) included came out to protest the death of those 17
victims. In fact as I write this 40
world leaders are currently in Paris for a demonstration march in support of unity and the victims. Being a
respecter of all human lives, it gladdens me that the world came together to
stand against terror, however what bugs about the whole #jesuisCharlie protest is
that it is increasingly becoming an Islamophobic protest. I keep seeing ridiculous
new headlines blaming the attack on Islam or Muslims as a whole. The attack was
carried out by Muslim extremists who are indeed terrorist, this does not mean
all Muslims are terrorist or that all Muslims agree with such acts of
terrorism. Many Muslims across the world have come out to condemn the attacks, yet
the media conveniently fails to show them. As a proud Christian I will be offended if all
Christians were labelled terrorist based on the actions of terrorist Christian
sects such as the Ku Klux Klan.
Boko Haram Massacre in Nigeria
Around the same time the Paris attacks were happening, Boko
Haram, another extremist terrorist group was attacking the town of Baga, in Borno
State of Nigeria. This attack was one of the deadliest by Boko Haram with over 2000 dead! Yes, you read it correctly 2000 people, women and children
included were killed. What bothers me as this is that, it barely made the news
with the whole focus being on the Paris attacks. The world was not as outraged
about this massacre as it was about the Paris massacre. No world leaders flew
in to Nigeria to demonstrate the deaths of 2000 innocent civilians. This saddens me because yet again the world
continues to show that the lives of Africans or black people in general doesn’t
matter, unlike the lives of Westerners/white people. #BlackLivesMatter , #NigerianLivesMatter, #AllLifeMatters
The Ridiculous
Public Flogging
So, on Friday January 9 2015, Saudi blogger Raif Badawi who
was sentenced to 10 years in prison with 1000 lashes in May 2014, received his
first 50 public lashes. Badawi’s crime you may ask, is for allegedly insulting
Islam on his website because his online network called for an end to the
dominance of religion over Saudi public life. He is due to receive 50 lashes every
week for a period of 20 weeks. It is a shame that humanity still has to deal
with such barbaric ridiculous acts at this day and age. It amazes me that is there little protest about this around the world, after all we are taking about the same freedom of speech exercised in France. Oh well maybe it is because the world refuses to bite the hands that provides oil (sips tea). Yet again people should
refrain from blaming this on Islam because this is purely the act of the Saudi
Monarch which continues to use religion like many rulers before them to oppress
the masses.
I end this week’s Watin de Apin with an inspiring video
of 11 year old Asia, a young entrepreneur whose
marketing and business savviness is out of this world. As if that is not inspiring
enough this little mogulette in the making also works to empower other little
girls. Kudos young lady, keep doing what you are do!
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