Have a Coke and an Anti-Retroviral
Fighting AIDS in Tanzania
Slate Magazine. June 8, 2011.
HAI DISTRICT, Tanzania—A Coca-Cola truck rumbled down the road, ferrying its bubbly, sugary cargo to shops and kiosks in the northern part of the country around the edge of Kilimanjaro National Park. The one thing you can be sure of finding in any far-flung corner of Tanzania is a bottle of Coke. A new pilot program—the first of its kind—aims to make anti-retroviral drugs as easily accessible as a bottle of soda by tapping into Coca-Cola’s established delivery network throughout Tanzania.
Tanzania’s government supply-chain agency, the Medical Stores Department, currently distributes anti-retrovirals, malaria medication, and other drugs to 500 points around Tanzania, but President Jakaya Kikwete wants medicine taken to the doorsteps of all of the country’s 5,000 health facilities. Widening the distribution net so broadly could prove a daunting task, since Tanzania’s current distribution system is already overtaxed, and even the best health facilities have trouble keeping all the necessary medicines in stock.
Enter Coca-Cola. The beverage giant, which opened its first bottling plant in Tanzania in 1952, has spent decades finding the most efficient way to reach distant villages and adapting to changing roadway conditions. Through three local bottling franchises, the company is sharing its distribution routes with the government supply-chain agency. The program, a public-private partnership that is now being tried in nine of the country’s regions, lets MSD use Coca-Cola’s delivery maps and distribution partners to create a new delivery model, with the aim of moving drugs around the country more efficiently. “If anyone is sure how to get stuff the last mile, it’s Coke,” says Shaaban Husein, director of finance and administration at MSD.
Can Traditional Medicine and Modern Science Coexist?
Fighting AIDS in Tanzania.
Slate Magazine. June 9, 2011.
SIHA DISTRICT, Tanzania—Maria Paulo sat on a bench in the middle of the playground outside the children’s tuberculosis ward at the Kibong’oto National TB Hospital, adjusting her red shúkà wrap and bobbing her 3-year-old grandson, Musa, on her knee. She had brought Musa to the TB hospital from their Maasai village, after both traditional medicine and a two-month stint in the Monduli District Hospital had failed to cure him. Musa’s advanced TB, which Maria said he probably contracted from his father, was diagnosed with an X-ray. “His lungs were black,” she said. Treating the Maasai has been a particular challenge, since many believe that AIDS, TB, and other ailments are “not for the Maasai,” and so they do not seek treatment until they are very sick, if ever, doctors told me.
The nomadic lifestyle of the Maasai and their trust in traditional medicine hinder attempts to provide them with modern medical treatment. “The situation at the hospital is not like home, but Musa is getting better, so I forget about all my other problems,” Maria told me. At home, Maria lives in a polygamist household, but at the hospital she is her grandson’s sole caretaker, sleeping on a bed next to him in the pediatric TB ward. The room was airy and bright, with knotted mosquito nets dangling over the bed. Kibong’oto is surprisingly cheery: The lush, well-manicured grounds are bisected by swept red paths and dotted with tidy cinder-block buildings with green metal roofs. The hospital, which has 340 beds, opened as a tuberculosis sanitarium in 1926, when it was thought that the fresh air at the base of Mount Kilimanjaro would heal the patients, who came to the hospital from around British East Africa. “There were no TB meds then,” said Dr. Liberate John, the hospital’s administrator. “They thought that sunlight would kill the bacilla.”
Deaf School abuse
Baton Rouge Advocate. September 28, 2008, Page 1A.
Fourteen years ago, 13-year-old Daniel Lewis enrolled as a boarding student at the Louisiana School for the Deaf, a place that was supposed to give him the skills to engage with the world.
That August, Daniel — with bright blue eyes and blond hair, but borderline mentally retarded and smaller than his peers — moved into a room in the middle school dorm on the school’s Baton Rouge campus with three other boys.
During Daniel’s second week at the school, one of his roommates, a larger 13-year-old of normal intelligence, began crawling into his bed at night to rape him, Daniel recounted recently.
La. School for Deaf to be closed for review
Baton Rouge Advocate. October 8, 2008, Page 1A.
The Louisiana School for the Deaf will close temporarily beginning today to allow administrators time to implement broad changes to ensure the school is a safe place for children, state Superintendent of Education Paul Pastorek announced Tuesday.
Also on Tuesday, two top officials with oversight of the school told Pastorek they will be leaving — one resigning and one retiring — effective Friday.
Pastorek said the school will close for “days, not months” and officials next week will have a better idea of when the school will reopen. Pastorek said students residing at the school will be sent home this afternoon.