Africa Gets Charmed

When my fellow Hoya Dikembe Mutombo joins forces with Alyssa Milano, is there anything they cannot conquer? According to Milano’s debut on the Huffington Post, a crisis even larger than AIDS and malaria combined afflicts the poor: Neglected Tropical Diseases, or NTD’s (as opposed to STD’s). It sounds serious enough:

Diseases like river blindness, that’s caused by black flies that bite their victims near the eyes and leave behind parasitic worms to destroy sight. And snail fever, which you get by simply bathing or washing in a stream, and which causes severe liver or kidney damage. And elephantiasis, so named because it leads to unspeakable deformities, like swelling of the legs to elephant-sized proportions, making even walking impossible.

Apparently Poison Ivy is not an NTD. But she is ultimately upbeat:

“You can control and potentially eliminate the seven most common NTDs for just 50 cents per person, per year-the average cost of parking your car at a meter for one hour, and a fraction of the cost of antiviral treatment for HIV/AIDS and mult-idrug therapy for tuberculosis.”

Which to me is somehow more convincing coming from the star of Embrace of the Vampire than Sally Struthers. Milano also provides the useful link to the Sabin Vaccine Institutes’s STOP NTDs Campaign. Right about now you are probably wondering when I am going to say “Who will be sexing Dikembe tonight?” But just because I happen to mention Dikembe Mutumbo does not mean I have to automatically ask who will be sexing Dikembe tonight, for “who will be sexing Dikembe tonight” is none of our business. Now aren’t you glad I didn’t mention it?

Africa Gets Charmed

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