Right now the most important thing in our flat on the top floor of the new block at the bottom of the Bingham compound is not my laptop, nor my quadcopter. Not even my Logitech Momo steering wheel for driving F1 cars on my laptop. No; it’s the fly swatter.

We were warned that when we moved to this end of the compound the dry season would see us battling a lot of small flies; the warning was accurate. As I sat here yesterday relishing a breakfast of bacon (frozen, imported, expensive, but tasty none the less) and eggs (supplied by one of the cleaners at HQ who also keeps chickens) I could see seven of the little blighters on the balcony doors. Within a short time my trusty fly swatter had done its business and all seven were no more. Many more met their end during the day. They are small, irritating, noiseless and love landing on your hands (hey! - one just landed this very second on my knuckle as I was typing the word “hands”!) Bear with me a sec… where’s that fly swatter? I’m just hoping they aren’t mango flies – several seem to roost all night on the top of my towel on the rail. Want to know what mango flies do? Read this.

Solving the Obesity problem

Chris and I were both amused by the BBC news article yesterday on the possibility of a “sugar tax” to try to reduce burgeoning obesity in the UK, focussing particularly on soft drinks. Huge amounts of sugar-rich soft drinks are consumed here – demonstrated by the appalling state of some of my patient’s teeth, especially the children. But there’s little obesity. Coke and Pepsi are two of the very few international companies to get a foothold in a country with extreme protectionist policies towards trade. We rarely see sugar-free varieties; when we do we buy in bulk. People often suck and chew sugar cane sold from wheelbarrows all over the city. But despite the significant sugar consumption in a country where at least 10 million are needing food aid, where food is expensive, often poor quality and sometimes hard to get, obesity is simply not a problem. That’s obvious just driving across the city. Tax sugar? Perhaps just eat less of everything?

Maybe the UK should consider a tax on Pringles. It’s very exciting when we can get a tube of real Pringles - almost as exciting as finding Diet Coke. Chris and I will share a tube over a couple of weeks. I recently heard of a man being cared for in hospital in the UK (with some considerable difficulty) who weighed 42 stone – that’s 270 Kg, almost 4 times my weight, or for my US friends just shy of 600 pounds. One of his carers reliably informs me that he ate a tube of Pringles every day, seven days a week, brought into hospital for him by his family. And that was just a snack. He probably though his weight was something to do with his “glands”; I suspect it was more likely something to do with Pringles. Living here in Addis, a city full of thin and slim people, the causes of obesity are not hard to deduce. Pass me those Pringles Chris…

Miracle Medication

This afternoon we drove across the city to meet a medical team who have just arrived from the USA. They will be doing a couple of weeks of intensive medical care in some of the poorest parts of the city, as part of the ACT Project (I will be joining them for a day next week). I went to collect some medication. They have brought the rituximab that B (see last week’s post) needs to enhance his chemotherapy for active leukaemia. When B’s oncologist asked me if I could get this I was in despair – it was extremely expensive, our special fund for life-saving treatment didn’t have enough money available, and getting hold of it would mean obtaining it from abroad - I had no idea how we would achieve that. SIM, Bingham and I emailed a lot of people – including a friend and colleague in the USA. His daughter (a physician) happened to be on a trip to India. He contacted her and she managed to find some at a much more reasonable cost that anywhere else we had tried (UK, USA, Kenya). She just happened to be getting back to the USA in time to give it to the medical team who arrived here yesterday. However the the journey was quite a long one – check out this map to see just how well travelled this rituximab is!

So we now have the medication – this is nothing short of a miracle. Whether this will knock B’s disease into remission is yet to be seen, but at least we can now try. And the special fund has had over US$1400 in donations since we sent out a plea for funds to support B’s treatment. Thanks to all those who have given and prayed. I’ll let you know how B gets on. And if you get the urge to contribute to the cost of these drugs (we’re still quite a bit short) please go to www.sim.co.uk and quote project number 092546. Thank you.