Declare Acholi disaster area

Feb 09, 2012

THE anguish, misery, frustration and hopelessness that has gripped the Acholi community in Pader, Kitgum and Lamwo and Ugandans of goodwill over the mysterious ‘nodding disease’ afflicting over 4,000 children and killed at least 200 according to local media reports, is now being shared thousands of

By Vivian E. Asedri

THE anguish, misery, frustration and hopelessness that has gripped the Acholi community in Pader, Kitgum and Lamwo and Ugandans of goodwill over the mysterious ‘nodding disease’ afflicting over 4,000 children and killed at least 200 according to local media reports, is now being shared thousands of miles away by people of New York in the United States.

New York State Department of Health and U.S. Centers for Disease Control (CDC) officials in Atlanta, Georgia, have now confirmed that at least 15 teenage children (14 girls and one boy) from Le Roy High School in Genesee County, New York, are suffering from a mysterious disease with similar symptoms of involuntary head nodding, epileptic-like seizures and slurred speech. 

All 15 children have stopped attending school. A new twist in the mystery emerged last week when a 36-year-old New York nurse practitioner, Ms. Marge Fitzsimmons, who had no connection with the Le Roy High School students, was also diagnosed with the symptoms. 

Unlike in Uganda where the government and Ministry of Health officials have been virtually impotent to identify or at least medically control the suffering of the victims, officials here have jumped into action. The first in a series of hypothesis for the health officials is to liken the symptoms to Tourette’s syndrome, a neurological disorder marked by repetitive involuntary motor and verbal tics, head jerks, grunts, arm swings and seizures. 

According to Taber’s Cyclopedic Medical Dictionary, Tourette’s syndrome may be caused by a mental disorder from poisonous chemical intake to the brain.

Researchers from Dent Neurological Institute of Buffalo, New York, who had suspected the children might be suffering from Pediatric Acute-onset Neuropsychiatric Syndrome (PANS) tested all the children for PANS and ruled it out. One of the Dent specialists, Dr. Rosario Trifiletti, told the NBC News that walking pneumonia might cause the symptoms.

However, a huge cloud now hangs over the environmental and poisonous chemical intake factor as cause of the disease outbreak. A renowned environmental campaigner and lawyer, Ms. Erin Brockovich, has argued that a train derailment near Le Roy High School in the 1970s that spilled huge amounts of poisonous chemicals could be the cause of the children’s suffering. 

Indeed, according to a U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) report in 1999, about one tone of cyanide crystals and 130,000 litres of trichoroethene chemical spilled to the ground during that train derailment near the school’s sports ground. 

According to EPA, the cyanide crystals were removed but the trichloroethene was absorbed into the ground.

As the U.S. researchers continue with their frantic effort to get to the bottom of the ‘nodding disease’ mystery, including possibility of bacterial or virus infections to the brain, if the poisonous chemical spill and eventual intake by the children has any validity, it may raise some soul-searching questions to the health officials in Uganda. 

For instance, since the Acholi sub-region is emerging out of nearly 20 years of Lords Resistance Army (LRA) armed insurgency, could some of the weapons used over the years be a factor to cause the ‘nodding disease’? 

Also since most of the communities in the insurgency area are slowly adjusting to normal life-styles after difficult years in Internally Displaced Peoples’ (IDP) camps, could the ‘nodding disease’ also be caused by what the Dent Neurological Institute researchers suspect as Conversion Disorder, characterised by psychological malfunctions? Or could these children have ingested poisonous chemicals with relief food supplied in the IDP camps? These are valid questions that need answers.

Whereas none of the New York victims have died from the mysterious disease, nurse Ms. Fitzsimmons told the NBC News, “When it first started, I thought maybe I’m going crazy. As an adult, I can’t imagine these teenagers going through this and for anyone to think that they’re faking it at all. Try living a day in their shoes.”

The question I have for the Government is: How many more of our children must die before the Acholi sub-region is declared a disaster area warranting emergency release of funds to ameliorate the devastating effects of this mysterious illness to the local community? 

And, why didn’t the Members of Parliament collect signatures to convene an emergency session to address this outbreak?

If we cannot fight for the healthcare and welfare of our children, what justifies our national priorities?

The writer is a Medical Information Technologist, San Diego, California 

 

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