LIHEDE National Malaria Campaign Message
By Syrulwa Somah, PhD
Executive Director, Liberian History, Education & Development, Inc. (LIHEDE), Greensboro, NC
Published: 15 May, 2007
LIHEDE National Malaria Campaign Message
By Syrulwa Somah, PhD
Executive Director, Liberian History, Education & Development, Inc. (LIHEDE), Greensboro, NC
&
Associate Professor, Environmental and Occupational Safety & Health
NC A&T State University, Greensboro, NC
Delivered by Mrs. Henrietta White-Holder
Regional Representative-LIHEDE
at the
17th National Convention
United Bassa (Liberia) Organization in the Americas (UNIBOA), Inc.
Woonsocket, Rhode Island, USA
May 26, 2007
Read another Keynote Address delivered at Rhode Island Hospital
Syrulwa Somah, PhD
President Joseph D. Sinyan and members of the National Administration of UNIBOA (United Bassa (Liberia) Organization in the Americas); Board Chairman Mydea Reeves-Karpeh and members of the Board of Directors of UNIBOA; National Convention Chairman Clarence Brown and members of the 2007 National Convention Planning Committee of UNIBOA; Bishop John G. Innis and members of the clergy here present; distinguished platform quests; fellow Liberians, ladies and gentlemen:
II am honored once more by both your kind invitation and the opportunity granted me to partake with you in this 17th National Convention, and to speak with you on pressing national issues in our homeland, especially about the current LIHEDE campaign to control, prevent, and eradicate malaria in Liberia. I shall tell you shortly what LIHEDE is doing about malaria control and prevention in Liberia, and how you might help in that effort. But I must first congratulate you for the efforts your organization has expended over the years to contribute to the socioeconomic developments of Liberia, particularly in Grand Bassa, River Cess, and Margibi Counties. For this great efforts on your part, I want to extend to you peace and love from the Board of Directors, the Executive Officers, and members of the Liberian History, Education, & Development, Inc. (LIHEDE), of which I am the executive director.
II can still remember, as if yesterday, when I stood before you to deliver the keynote address at your 14th National Convention in Atlanta, Georgia. I spoke to you then on the topic, “The Role of the Bassa in Reshaping Liberia.” I spoke to you about the historic role the Bassa people played in the creation of Liberia, and I asked you as a Bassa man, as a Bassa woman, and as a Bassa child never to forget who we are and where we came from as a Bassa people. I said if we forgot our past as a people, then we are more likely to live freely and carelessly in the present so much so that we will not be prepared to face the challenges of the future. Indeed, I asked you to dig deeper into our Bassa heritage and learn those lessons that will help us to become good leaders. I said to you in 2004 that there was a greater hope for peace, unity, and development in our homeland of Liberia, but that we needed to begin developing the Bassa counties first, as part of our efforts to rebuild Liberia into a prosperous nation that we and our children will be proud of in the future.
II also reminded you in 2004 about the Bassa proverb that says: “The hotness of a pepper pod begins in the ground and not at its maturity.” I cited that proverb to emphasize the point that you and I have a moral and ethical responsibility to see Liberia rise again, regardless of the fact that some of our sons and daughters have tainted our character and undermined our standing in Liberian society and the world. I also reminded all of us to begin to teach the greatness of Bassa culture and way of life to our children in order to spread the teachings of our forefathers that a tool shapes the hand as much as the hand shapes the tool. In other words, it was in the palm of our hands that Liberia was born, so we have a responsibility to contribute meaningfully to the peace, stability, and national development of Liberia as Bassa people.
IBut we cannot make any meaningful contributions to Liberia unless we have good leaders both within our community organizations and at the national levels in Liberia. And on the issue of good leadership, I presented a paper on “Nonprofit Organizational Development, Leadership & Responsibility” at your national leadership training seminar held in Arlington, Texas in February 2004. In that presentation, I reminded you that the hallmark of leadership at any level, and in any part of the world, is TRUST. I said people will generally not choose you or regard you as their leader under normal circumstances unless they believe they can trust you. I said leadership is more about service to a group of people than about power, control, and self-enrichment. I said leadership implies a willingness and commitment on our part to effect positive changes in society for the betterment of all, by exhibiting certain qualities and characteristics of a good leader such as honesty, care, commitment positive thinking, and careful planning.
IWell, I know you heeded my advice because your organization has managed to survive the last three years since 2004 to gather here today in celebration of your 17th anniversary and national convention. I am very proud of you, my brothers and sisters in UNIBOA for the timing of this splendid 17th National Convention in the great state of Rhode Island, the hub center of many of our fellow Liberians residing in the United States. And by splendid I am not implying that your organization did not experience any challenges in the last three years since I participated in your annual events. Surely, you had your share of disappointments and cherished times just like any other Liberian organization here in the United States, but I am proud of you nonetheless that you have managed to overcome whatever challenges and odds you had to come together to host this 17th national convention here in Rhode Island. Now give yourselves a round of applause for a job well done in over the last three years.
Okay, as many of you might already know, my organization, the Liberian History, Education, and Development, Inc. (LIHEDE) has spent the last three years campaigning for malaria control and prevention in Liberia. Last December, LIHEDE, in collaboration with the Liberian Ministry of Health & Social Welfare and other health-related agencies and institutions in Liberia, hosted the first post-war national conference on malaria control and prevention in Monrovia. The Monrovia national health conference was preceded by a symposium titled “Combating Malaria in Post-Conflict Liberia,” which was held by LIHEDE at North Carolina A&T State University in Greensboro, North Carolina in May 2005. And as recently as a few weeks ago, LIHEDE hosted a malaria awareness program in Baltimore, Maryland through collaborations with the Liberian Ministry of Health & Social Welfare and a number of Liberians and Liberian organizations in that American state to galvanize public support for the national campaign to control and eradicate, if possible, malaria in Liberia. In fact, on June 2nd, 2007, LIHEDE and the African Alliance of Rhode Island will be hosting a similar malaria awareness program here in Rhode Island, to which all of you in this audience are invited.
IToday, though, I have come to ask you, the sons and daughters of Grand Bassa, River Cess, Margibi, and Montserrado counties in UNIBOA, to put your weight behind and support the successful implementation of the STOP MALARIA NOW IN LIBERIA CAMPAIGN, a grassroots and civic movement being led by LIHEDE to develop grassroots participation in the formulation and implementation of strategies to combat malaria in Liberia. My call to you to help us defeat malaria is straightforward and clear: our people are dying everyday from Malaria and we need to put our resources together to stop malaria in its tracks before it is too late.
At current rates of malaria infection in Liberia, malaria is without any doubts Liberia’s 9/11 or nuclear weapons, and it will help to kill our democracy and development unless we take action now. About 90% of our people in Monrovia, where the majority of the educated Liberians and key national decision-makers live, are exposed to malaria, including more than 50% of the active workforce, which is being infected by malaria. Malaria is also one of the leading killers of children in Liberia today, as more than one out of every five newborn Liberian child (including Bassa children) will not live to celebrate their 5th birthday due to malaria. In other words, malaria is the major cause of the high infant mortality rate and close to 21,500 deaths in Liberia each year, let alone the high costs for treating malaria by both the government and private individuals. But, surprisingly, malaria is preventable, but we, as Liberians, have not taken an aggressively leading role in heralding malaria control, prevention, and eradication in Liberia. But now is the time for you to join hands with LIHEDE in the ongoing fight for malaria control and prevention in Liberia. Ladies and Gentlemen, on a continuous basis, there is some kind of patient in a hospital and clinic somewhere in Monrovia suffering the debilitating affects of this disease.
As I’d informed you at the beginning of this presentation, for the past three years, LIHEDE has effortlessly held conferences in the United States and the historic 2006 National Malaria Conference in Liberia to bring to the consciousness of the Liberian people and the world the magnitude of the impact of malaria in Liberia. One of the highlights of the 2006 Conference was an invitation extended to officials of LIHEDE during the National Malaria Conference by the US embassy to witness the historic announcement made by President George W. Bush via satellite, naming Liberia as a focused country to benefit from the President Malaria Initiative (PMI) funds. As a focused nation, Liberia is expected to receive $2.5 million in 2007 and $8 million in 2008 to combat this insidious disease-malaria. Certainly, the $10.5 PMI funding earmarked for Liberia in the next two years to fight malaria is a good start, but it is not enough. We need to redouble our efforts to solicit more funding or materials in the fight for malaria control, prevention, and eradication in Liberia.
My dear brothers and sisters, we can defeat malaria in Liberia if we are open and willing to join our efforts together for this very worthy cause. We are developing an active civic society in which (Liberians and Friends of Liberia) in the Diaspora can come up with plans and programs to assist in the implementation of the 2006 National Malaria Conference Resolution in order to ensure that benefits from the PMI directly impact the vast majority of the population of Liberia who live in rural communities. I want the Bassa people to put their might behind this effort, just as they did with the creation of Liberia through sound leadership and cooperation. Indeed, malaria control is a costly venture in both monetary and human capital, in terms of short and long-term loss of work time, economic losses associated with infant and child mortality and morbidity, and the actual monetary costs of malaria treatment, control, and prevention. We must therefore join together and work hard for the successful implementation of the campaign to eradicate malaria in Liberia if we wish for a better future for our children in a malaria free society.
We in LIHEDE believe that no great civilization has ever been erected in the absence of a healthy people. We must therefore be healthy and free of malaria in order for us to put our resources together and rebuild our shattered homeland. Malaria has an enormous impact on the socio-economic prosperity of our nation, so we must do everything to defeat malaria. We need to build a new Liberia that is not just malaria free but is also developed and prosperous. In this new Liberia, we need to build more public schools, universities, recreational parks, community libraries, highways, hospitals, radio and television stations that covers the whole country; as well as hydro plants for electricity and water supplies to every political subdivision in Liberia. Again, we can do this if we are willing to pool our resources together. Certainly, my brothers and sisters attending this 17th National Convention of UNIBOA, I don’t need to remind you about the many things that went wrong in our country for the past 160 years. You and I cannot change our history. We can only join hands in our common humanity and work together to change our present and our future. We the Bassa people must do all that is humanly possible Today, not Tomorrow, to provide a haven for all lives that can be saved from the bites of mosquitoes, the malaria-carrying insects. I call on you to join LIHEDE and her friends in the national campaign for malaria control, prevention, and eradication in Liberia.
I thank you for the time and opportunity given me to share with you the vision that a malaria-free Liberia is possible in the near future once we try. Thank you once more ladies and gentlemen, and I do wish you a successful 17th National Convention.
