NPI Announces Formation of its AGAP
Division, for Kenya, on 10 December 2004
(AGAP means Awareness Group on AIDS Prevention)
AGAP is registered with the Non-Governmental Organizations Board
of Kenya, and operations are under the direction of Gacii E.
Waciuma, MBA, Executive Director. AGAP’s main facilities
are located in Nairobi, Kenya. (Email: info@bewareofaids.org)
As of 2004, HIV/ AIDS has claimed the lives of over 1.5 million
Kenyans, infected more than 3 million more, and orphaned an
estimated 1.2 million children. About 300,000 of the infected
are small children who received mother-to-child HIV transmission.
The HIV prevalence rate is over 13 percent, and increasing ---with
annual deaths now exceeding 180,000 for a population just over
32 million. Kenyan life expectancy has declined from 65 years
to the current 46 years due to AIDS. Illness due to AIDS has
caused a dramatic drop in productivity, with a daily economic
loss of over US$3.5 million. The death of many youthful members
of the labor force has greatly increased training costs. There
are health care, orphan care, funerals, and other AIDS related
costs that have created a major financial crisis. In general
family savings have been exhausted. Entire villages are being
lost with the population being found in graveyards. Any economic
progress made in the last two decades has been mostly lost due
to AIDS. Voluntary Counseling & Testing Centers (VTCs),
operated by the government and NGOs, are seldom being used since
most Kenyans fear all the discrimination that usually comes
with being identified as HIV positive. When an HIV positive
person can afford antiretrovirals, they are often not effective
because most of these people drink polluted water and have poor
diets. Most AIDS orphans are already very malnourished, and
many live as homeless street-children. Rural Kenyans have a
poverty rate of 83 percent, and poverty makes it far more difficult
to combat AIDS. Some 56 percent of the total population earns
less than US$1 per day, and they cannot afford AIDS medications.
An unexpected result of Kenya’s HIV/ AIDS epidemic is
the fact that young teachers are dying faster than replacements
can be trained.
Thus, AIDS is also acting to damage educational programs in
Kenya.
To help stop the approaching AIDS pandemic, AGAP will undertake
the development of prevention-oriented attitudes, and prevention
oriented actions to include:
1) Beginning an ethnic/ language appropriate billboard campaign
with highly
pictorial AIDS prevention message(s).
2) Starting of Radio Schools providing education, entertainment,
and repetitive
AIDS prevention messages that are ethnic/ language appropriate.
3) When lacking, providing villages with electricity and community
entertainment
centers with strong AIDS prevention messages on posters at each
center.
4) Direct intervention by finding what villagers urgently need,
and helping to meet
those needs when the villagers fully commit to AIDS prevention
practices.
5) Development of special programs to assist and educate the
homeless street-
children to stop the spread of AIDS among this group.
6) Assisting villagers with potable water and community food
security projects to
improve general health and make any antiretrovirals used more
effective.
7) Aiding villagers in the local production of those algal-polyphenolics
food
supplements known to greatly enhance immune response.
8) Working with qualified pharmaceutical research firms in the
development and
testing of vaccines or drugs to prevent AIDS.
9) A mother-to-child HIV transmission prevention program.
10) Filming of a documentary, for TV and Cinemas, to deliver
an AIDS prevention
message within the context of a documentary on Kenya (to be
shown using appropriate languages & sub-titles).
11) To undertake any and all other appropriate legal actions
to stop the spread of
AIDS ---and to evaluate the progress made for each of these
AGAP projects.
What we undertake, and the specific time it is started, will
partly depend on critical needs and related options for meeting
those needs. The availability of staff, essential resources,
and funding shall also determine when and what projects may
be started. Within these guidelines, AGAP will always seek to
engage in the efforts having the most potential to stop AIDS
from killing others. Any and all help will be greatly appreciated,
and specific donation instructions are provided on NPI’s
website (www.needfulprovision.org). Thank you.
David A. Nuttle, President
Needful Provision, Inc. (NPI)
P.S. Nearly 70 percent of all new HIV infections occur in Africa,
and this continent is becoming destabilized from the aspects
of health, society, economy, and security. There is rather extensive
evidence that terrorist and insurgent groups already seek to
take full advantage of the growing chaos. AIDS has therefore
become a major international security issue.
NPI Announces Formation of its AWARE
Division, for India, on 10 November 2004
(AWARE means Action for Welfare & Awakening in the Rural
Environment)
AWARE is registered with the Government of Andhra Pradesh Province,
in India, and the Government of India (Reg. No. 0101120077).
Local operations are directed by D. James Prabhakar, from AWARE’s
office in Anantapur, Andhra Pradesh, 515001, India. Most of
the population served is outcastes, untouchables, and isolated
tribes living in small villages attempting to live as marginal
farmers in areas with very poor soils and many prolonged periods
of drought. These are people living on the brink-of-starvation,
with a wide assortment of problems derived from shortages of:
1) Potable water; 2) Healthful foods; 3) Health/ medical services;
4) Sanitation; 5) Education; 6) Jobs and income opportunities;
7) Housing; 8) Energy; 9) Communications; 10) Transportation;
11) Loan availability; 12) Seeds, fertilizers, tools and machinery;
13) Marketing systems; and so on. In brief, the people have
essentially nothing, and more than half are illiterate. Increasing
numbers of these people have AIDS as well as other diseases
that reduce the adult population. Despair is all that is plentiful,
and in some months over 300 farmers may commit suicide. The
farmers that survive may soon exhaust their resources in the
search for adequate water supplies. Most villagers walk over
2 (two) miles per day for drinking water supplies, and this
water is often polluted. Last, but not least, the local environment
has long been seriously damaged by prior, improper use of pesticides.
Government of India (GOI) officials believe that all of the
above stated problems are so enormous that solutions, of any
sort, are not possible. For political purposes, solutions are
planned but implemented on a “token” basis only.
The actual solutions practiced have been to just let people
die. In prior years, the U.S. Agency for Intl. Development
(USAID), and other “aid” organizations have provided
funds to help resolve these types of problems in the Third World.
However, corruption usually prevents most funds from being used
for the intended purposes. Most Americans, as a whole, have
long ignored problems in the Third World. Only now, with the
increased threat of terrorism, do many Americans worry about
these very impoverished areas being the “incubators”
of future terrorists. With this problem in mind, NPI now seeks
to find innovative ways to help the poor to better help themselves.
By soon demonstrating effective solutions for the many problems
of the poorest of the poor, NPI hopes to lead by example. We
only ask for your funding support to assist with these efforts.
Thank you.
David A. Nuttle, President
Needful Provision, Inc. (NPI)
P.S. The population of Andhra Pradesh Province, in the southeast
of India, consists of over 70 million people. Over 1 (one) billion
people, 1 (one) of every 6 (six) people in the world, resides
in India.
Opening of Latin Division
