Posted by Angelia-Professional Networkers on May 23, 2003 at 01:52:48:
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Section
Regional
Monday, December 18, 2002
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Can Africa Avoid the Coming Killer Diseases?
By SAM WAINAINA
SPECIAL CORRESPONDENT
THE EBOLA outbreak in northern Uganda that spread to the southwest and west of the country over the past three months had the potential to cause a total breakdown of Uganda's medical service.
But if the proceedings of the 11th International Congress on Transfer Factors held in Monterrey, Mexico, in 1999, were taken seriously, the outbreak could have been contained sooner.
Uganda's Directorate of Medical Services and some foreign teams have so far contained the situation without resorting to draconian measures similar to those that applied in the Congo in the early 1990s after the Kikwit outbreak.
According to David Horowitz, author of Emerging Diseases - Aids and Ebola, during the Zaire ebola epidemic, the late "Maximum Ruler of Zaire" Mobutu Sese Seko, ordered his army to shoot on sight anybody who tried to leave the quarantine area.
If the epidemic were not so tragic and painful to the victims and their families, some of the stories told about it would be hilarious.
A local newspaper claimed that when a drunken man threw up inside a public taxi, fellow passengers scrambled to get out as if someone had released a cobra in the vehicle.
In Jinja, so the story goes, when factory workers delivered a colleague to the main hospital while still dressed in workplace plastic boots and aprons, there was a near stampede as medical workers and patients alike sought to get as far away from them as possible. But the patient was only suffering from ordinary fever.
Matters have not been helped by the death of Dr Matthew Lukwiya, the heroic superintendent of Lacor Hospital in Gulu, who died of ebola, which he caught while nursing patients at the hospital. He saved many Ugandans by alerting the authorities of the outbreak at the very outset.
In all,12 medical workers have died of the disease, while another doctor is fighting for his life at Masindi Hospital in western Uganda.
It is worth noting that medical authorities in Uganda have done a great job under Third World constraints. But the decision by the Ministry of Health to invest in an epidemiological quest for the ebola vector seems to be a misallocation of resources.
This is because the history of vector control in post-independence Africa in contrast to the colonial period makes dismal reading. Even if you successfully determined what the vector was, would you, for instance, spray the vast savanna because the carrier is mosquito, sand-fly, tse tse fly or bats? Bats were suspected to be the vectors in the 1976 Sudan ebola outbreak, which started in a cotton factory in Yambio-Tambura in southwestern Sudan, as there were flocks of them in the ginnery.
In South Africa, they are now calling for the return of DDT after a surge in killer malaria cases. If the type of malaria that killed an estimated 100,000 people in Madagascar some 15 years ago were to return to the tropical island nation, they would probably be as helpless as ever.
America and Europe are still waiting for the "Big Kill" epidemic which medical scientists have repeated all too often will occur within the next few years. About five years ago Time magazine predicted the "Big Kill" will be an influenza epidemic that could kill 60 million people worldwide.
African nations are duty bound to remember that there may be no time for vaccines when these predicted epidemics explode across the continents. Judging by what came out of the 11th International Congress on Transfer Factors in Monterrey, in 1999 as well as recent information, hope for Africa lies in what has been known in medical literature for over 50 years as Transfer Factors or TF.
The most abundant source of Transfer Factors today is cow colostrum, what Dr Rob Robertson calls "God's first gift to the newborn." Transfer Factors are the vital healing ingredients in colostrum.
Dr Robertson was for many years head of emergency medicine at the Western Baptist Hospital in Kentucky, USA, and is a regular radio talk show host on the subject.
"Transfer Factor is the equivalent of jet fuel from crude oil, whivh is the equivalent of colostrum," he says. "Transfer Factor will be the way we treat illnesses in future."
Before cow colostrum was discovered as a rich source of Transfer Factors blood was the main source of this healing agent. Indeed, during the Kikwit epidemic, a Congolese surgeon seriously considered using the blood of those who had survived the initial attack to treat subsequent cases.
The epidemic ran its course before he could do that. But the basis of his reasoning is rooted in the work of an American doctor, Sherwood Lawrence, who, while working with TB patients in 1949, discovered TFs after he noticed that immune response could be transferred from a donor to a recipient.
Dr Robertson says that, unlike antibodies, TFs are small molecules that are not consumed in the process of "binding" as happens when disease is confronted in the body.
Dr William Hennen, author of Transfer Factor, the Natural Immune Booster, who compounded the cutting edge variant of TF called Transfer Factor Plus, describes this immune agent as a "concentrated immune massaging system."
Besides raising the IQ of the individual's immune system as well gathering intelligence so as to alert naive and dormant immune systems to the impending danger, TFs extracted from colostrum and taken orally are also able to boost "natural killer cell" (NK) activity as well as moderate an over-excited immune system through the "suppressor" component in TFs.
Moreover, TFs will act as a memory agent for the immune system. Asserts Dr Hennen: "Transfer Factors are immune messenger molecules that educate and alert naive immune cells to an impending danger. They perform a catalytic role in the immune system."
Dr Robertson says that while TFs in the first mammary secretion are the sum of the mother's immune experiences that she passes on to her newborn, whose own immune system is utterly naive, TFs often are poly-valent or dextrous in their approach to novel conditions. "They help to catalyse the prising of infected or cancerous cells, paving the way for the NK cells to get down to work on the invading organism."
The TF extracted from dairy colostrum boosts NK activity up to 120 per cent, according to research done by Dr Daryl See of the Institute of Longevity Medicine in Huntington, California. Transfer Factor Plus, enhanced with thymic proteins, minerals, herbs and other factors was found to boost NK activity by 250 per cent. "This level of NK activity is unprecedented in medical literature," reported Dr See recently, in the Journal of the American Nutraceutical Association.
The 11th International Congress on TFs was clearly a case of missed opportunity for African doctors.
In a paper entitled "Twenty Five Years of Clinical Experience with Transfer Factors," Italian doctors G. Pizza, C. da Vinci, Palareti and D. Viza presented their experiences with TF in an Intensive Care Unit environment of a major Italian hospital.
The seriousness of the condition of patients in the ICU was illustrated by the statistic that 80 per cent of the patients died within three days of admission. "After TF therapy, the surviving patients' response to conventional therapy improved considerably," they said.
Dr Hennen concurs: "TF has an important role to play in modern medicine, faced with the emergence of new diseases like Aids or ebola or the resurfacing of old pathologies such as TB."
And internationally acclaimed cancer doctor and gynaecologist, Prof Duane Townsend, formerly of the University of California at Davis, says: "I put all my female patients on TF Plus. This is a true revolution in medicine."
*Sam Wainaina is a Nairobi-based freelance journalist.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Section
Regional
Monday, December 18, 2002
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Can Africa Avoid the Coming Killer Diseases?
By SAM WAINAINA
SPECIAL CORRESPONDENT
THE EBOLA outbreak in northern Uganda that spread to the southwest and west of the country over the past three months had the potential to cause a total breakdown of Uganda's medical service.
But if the proceedings of the 11th International Congress on Transfer Factors held in Monterrey, Mexico, in 1999, were taken seriously, the outbreak could have been contained sooner.
Uganda's Directorate of Medical Services and some foreign teams have so far contained the situation without resorting to draconian measures similar to those that applied in the Congo in the early 1990s after the Kikwit outbreak.
According to David Horowitz, author of Emerging Diseases - Aids and Ebola, during the Zaire ebola epidemic, the late "Maximum Ruler of Zaire" Mobutu Sese Seko, ordered his army to shoot on sight anybody who tried to leave the quarantine area.
If the epidemic were not so tragic and painful to the victims and their families, some of the stories told about it would be hilarious.
A local newspaper claimed that when a drunken man threw up inside a public taxi, fellow passengers scrambled to get out as if someone had released a cobra in the vehicle.
In Jinja, so the story goes, when factory workers delivered a colleague to the main hospital while still dressed in workplace plastic boots and aprons, there was a near stampede as medical workers and patients alike sought to get as far away from them as possible. But the patient was only suffering from ordinary fever.
Matters have not been helped by the death of Dr Matthew Lukwiya, the heroic superintendent of Lacor Hospital in Gulu, who died of ebola, which he caught while nursing patients at the hospital. He saved many Ugandans by alerting the authorities of the outbreak at the very outset.
In all,12 medical workers have died of the disease, while another doctor is fighting for his life at Masindi Hospital in western Uganda.
It is worth noting that medical authorities in Uganda have done a great job under Third World constraints. But the decision by the Ministry of Health to invest in an epidemiological quest for the ebola vector seems to be a misallocation of resources.
This is because the history of vector control in post-independence Africa in contrast to the colonial period makes dismal reading. Even if you successfully determined what the vector was, would you, for instance, spray the vast savanna because the carrier is mosquito, sand-fly, tse tse fly or bats? Bats were suspected to be the vectors in the 1976 Sudan ebola outbreak, which started in a cotton factory in Yambio-Tambura in southwestern Sudan, as there were flocks of them in the ginnery.
In South Africa, they are now calling for the return of DDT after a surge in killer malaria cases. If the type of malaria that killed an estimated 100,000 people in Madagascar some 15 years ago were to return to the tropical island nation, they would probably be as helpless as ever.
America and Europe are still waiting for the "Big Kill" epidemic which medical scientists have repeated all too often will occur within the next few years. About five years ago Time magazine predicted the "Big Kill" will be an influenza epidemic that could kill 60 million people worldwide.
African nations are duty bound to remember that there may be no time for vaccines when these predicted epidemics explode across the continents. Judging by what came out of the 11th International Congress on Transfer Factors in Monterrey, in 1999 as well as recent information, hope for Africa lies in what has been known in medical literature for over 50 years as Transfer Factors or TF.
The most abundant source of Transfer Factors today is cow colostrum, what Dr Rob Robertson calls "God's first gift to the newborn." Transfer Factors are the vital healing ingredients in colostrum.
Dr Robertson was for many years head of emergency medicine at the Western Baptist Hospital in Kentucky, USA, and is a regular radio talk show host on the subject.
"Transfer Factor is the equivalent of jet fuel from crude oil, whivh is the equivalent of colostrum," he says. "Transfer Factor will be the way we treat illnesses in future."
Before cow colostrum was discovered as a rich source of Transfer Factors blood was the main source of this healing agent. Indeed, during the Kikwit epidemic, a Congolese surgeon seriously considered using the blood of those who had survived the initial attack to treat subsequent cases.
The epidemic ran its course before he could do that. But the basis of his reasoning is rooted in the work of an American doctor, Sherwood Lawrence, who, while working with TB patients in 1949, discovered TFs after he noticed that immune response could be transferred from a donor to a recipient.
Dr Robertson says that, unlike antibodies, TFs are small molecules that are not consumed in the process of "binding" as happens when disease is confronted in the body.
Dr William Hennen, author of Transfer Factor, the Natural Immune Booster, who compounded the cutting edge variant of TF called Transfer Factor Plus, describes this immune agent as a "concentrated immune massaging system."
Besides raising the IQ of the individual's immune system as well gathering intelligence so as to alert naive and dormant immune systems to the impending danger, TFs extracted from colostrum and taken orally are also able to boost "natural killer cell" (NK) activity as well as moderate an over-excited immune system through the "suppressor" component in TFs.
Moreover, TFs will act as a memory agent for the immune system. Asserts Dr Hennen: "Transfer Factors are immune messenger molecules that educate and alert naive immune cells to an impending danger. They perform a catalytic role in the immune system."
Dr Robertson says that while TFs in the first mammary secretion are the sum of the mother's immune experiences that she passes on to her newborn, whose own immune system is utterly naive, TFs often are poly-valent or dextrous in their approach to novel conditions. "They help to catalyse the prising of infected or cancerous cells, paving the way for the NK cells to get down to work on the invading organism."
The TF extracted from dairy colostrum boosts NK activity up to 120 per cent, according to research done by Dr Daryl See of the Institute of Longevity Medicine in Huntington, California. Transfer Factor Plus, enhanced with thymic proteins, minerals, herbs and other factors was found to boost NK activity by 250 per cent. "This level of NK activity is unprecedented in medical literature," reported Dr See recently, in the Journal of the American Nutraceutical Association.
The 11th International Congress on TFs was clearly a case of missed opportunity for African doctors.
In a paper entitled "Twenty Five Years of Clinical Experience with Transfer Factors," Italian doctors G. Pizza, C. da Vinci, Palareti and D. Viza presented their experiences with TF in an Intensive Care Unit environment of a major Italian hospital.
The seriousness of the condition of patients in the ICU was illustrated by the statistic that 80 per cent of the patients died within three days of admission. "After TF therapy, the surviving patients' response to conventional therapy improved considerably," they said.
Dr Hennen concurs: "TF has an important role to play in modern medicine, faced with the emergence of new diseases like Aids or ebola or the resurfacing of old pathologies such as TB."
And internationally acclaimed cancer doctor and gynaecologist, Prof Duane Townsend, formerly of the University of California at Davis, says: "I put all my female patients on TF Plus. This is a true revolution in medicine."
*Sam Wainaina is a Nairobi-based freelance journalist.