sick & africa

okay so last week during my swim camp i busted up my left knee once again, i thought it was just bruised and i would get over but sad to say it hasn't gotten much better. i still can't move it certain ways, and i often walk with a limp :/ also because of my medication i'm on i feel very sick...i hate being sick...because when your sick, you go to the doctors, and when i go to the doctors, i just feel creeped out, and just don't like the smell of the place...sick people smell. bleh. but it's sorta ironic how when i get out of highschool, that i wish to become a surgeon. like i said before helping people is my thing.

so on another note:

HIV/AIDS epidemic in Africa. many of us are very unaware of what is happening in the many countries populating the world besides our own. in the U.S. if you were infected with such a virus, you knew exactly where to go to, to seek medical attention. a local clinic of sorts. you would run a series of bloodwork test in the lab, and within hours receive your diagnosis of the virus. in Africa, there is little to none medical help for the millions of adults and children infected with the virus. i was looking around on the internet for some more detailed information on this subject and i found out that on www.globalissues.org :

--Between 1999 and 2000 more people died of AIDS in Africa than in all the wars on the continent, as mentioned by the UN Secretary General, Kofi Annan.

--Lester R. Brown said "[2000] began with 24 million Africans infected with the virus. In the absence of a medical miracle, nearly all will die before 2010. Each day, 6,000 Africans die from AIDS. Each day, an additional 11,000 are infected."

(2008 study roughly estimated these statistics, but 2010 the numbers are higher...)

• 33.4 million living with HIV
• 2.7 million new infections of HIV
• 2 million deaths from AIDS
• Approximately 7 out of 10 deaths for 2008 were in Sub-Saharan Africa, a region that also has over two-thirds of adult HIV cases and over 90% of new HIV infections amongst children.

with that in mind, you also have to realize that if the parents of the family become infected with the deadly virus, the children have to stay home and take care of them. schooling becomes affected when either the children become infected or they have to stay home and help their families survive. their economy is also affected by this as well, with more of the people in the community dying, they fail to sell goods and prosper.

even African leaders fail to seek action for this epidemic. and many of us are very unaware of this. some of us are more concerned what new cell phone we might get, and what am i going to wear to the party tonight? materialistic thoughts like that make us ignorant. make people turn their heads, and open their eyes.

if you want to make a difference, start a program at your school, with fundraisers of some sort, to help donate medical attention to those who really need it the most. even going to www.toms.com and ordering a pair of shoes online is contributing to the need of others. when you order a pair of shoes from TOMS, they will donate a pair to children and families in thirdworld countries who are less off.

once again, the feeling of doing something greater than yourself in indescribable.

--Nikki.