nodding disease

So for my current newspaper article, I read one called "Health Ministry yet to roll out action plan for nodding disease." The article is from an independent daily Ugandan newspaper called The Daily Monitor. It's about how the Health Ministry keeps putting off their promise to provide more drugs and help towards this disease and lack of money is probably the main reason why. I found it super interesting for many reasons. First of all, I had never heard of nodding disease and one of the areas affected by it, is Gulu, which is where I'll be going. Nodding disease is "an unexplained syndrome characterized by seizures, physical and mental stunting that has affected more than 3,000 children and claimed 200 lives." They've been treating this chronic disease with epileptic drugs because nodding disease has been linked to "complex epilepsy", but they really don't know very much at all about the disease and how to treat it right.

Another thing I found interesting about the article, was that it proved to me that Ugandans recognize the health problems they have going on and they are working to improve them. I think for a long time I've had this idea in my mind that those in third world countries need help recognizing what health problems they have going on and that we, coming from better health conditions in the U.S., need to go over there and give them vaccinations and what not. I'm starting to realize gradually that there are smart people all over the world, in every country, who know what they need to do to improve their health conditions and they don't need to depend on us to "save them". I'm not saying that those of us living comfortable lifestyles can't lend our support and show that we care about those in worse conditions. I'm just finally realizing that it doesn't work for people who think they know everything and think they know how everything should be done, to go over to a developing country and push them out of their way with all their equipment and start giving out vaccinations. I know this is kind of an exaggerated example, but I'm just trying to say that we need to listen to and try to understand first what those Ugandans working in health centers feel that they need and what they think we can do to lend support. We shouldn't try to take over their jobs. We can hear their thoughts and ideas and then share our thoughts, but we can't force our ways upon them thinking we know best.