The Nahmias Cipher Report

Thousands of Israelis, many of whom originally from Ethiopia, take part in a demonstration against the discrimination of Ethiopian-Jews in Israel. the protesters march from the Israeli Parliament to the city center in Jerusalem, on January 18, 2012. Keren Manor

Ayanna Nahmias, Editor-in-Chief Last Modified: 23:25 PM EDT, 25 February 2012 JOHANNESBURG, South Africa – Nelson Mandela, the 1993 Nobel Peace Prize winner and former South African President has been hospitalized. The 93-year old is undergoing test to identify the cause of an undisclosed stomach ailment. In a statement, President Jacob Zuma said that Mandela [...]

Ayanna Nahmias, Editor-in-Chief Last Modified: 17:14 PM EDT, 26 December 2011 Nearly 300,000 women worldwide may be adversely impacted by the improper manufacture of breast implants by the now-defunct French company Poly Implant Prothese (PIP).  The malfeasance came to light when the French company which went bankrupt in 2010 was subsequently sold to a Dutch [...]

I narrowly survived an infection of cerebral malaria when I was 10 years old.  We lived just outside of Dar es Salaam, the capital of Tanzania, and because my father did not believe in Western medicine, he forbade my mother from seeking treatment for me when I fell ill.  If treated at the immediate onset [...]

“As African women and First Ladies, we have a tendency to downplay our strengths and achievements,” she said. “HIV in Africa is an African problem and we, as Africans, will work together to find the solution. This does not mean that we do not appreciate the generous support of our friends across the globe. It means that we will provide the leadership necessary to fight this epidemic.” ~ Mrs. Azeb Mesfin

On 2 August 2010, the Organisation of First Ladies of Africa (OAFLA) met in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. OAFLA decided to make its permanent office in Addis Ababa at its 7th January 2010 meeting. At the meeting they discussed the improvement of the lives of women in Africa through the management and eventual eradication of HIV/AIDS. These remarkable women are also committed to poverty alleviation and gender equality.

OAFLA was instituted to fight against the spread of the deadly virus across the continent through education and the implementation of preventive measures among their country’s populations. OAFLA also convened on 20 September 2010 in New York to participate in the United Nations Millennium Development Goals Summit, on the issue of women and children malnutrition.

Each day, particularly when I am late picking up my son, my mother and I have a running dialog that goes something like this………

Mom says, “you know at 6 pm I shut down. I do best in the morning, when the sun sets, although I love the little darling, I really want him to remain alive.”

I chuckle because I know that my mother is both deadly serious and hopelessly in love with her grandson, my child.

“Mom! Please, you know you love him too much for that,” I smile.

“I do! Yes I do! But that medication really wears off. It only last 12 hours and then he might as well be down in the floor twirling on his head, bless his heart.”

I long ago abandoned the notion of a life without storms, or a world without dry and killing seasons. Life is too complicated, too constantly changing, to be anything but what it is. And I am, by nature, too mercurial to be anything but deeply wary of the grave unnaturalness involved in any attempt to exert too much control over essentially uncontrollable forces. There will always be propelling, disturbing elements, and they will be there until, as Lowell put it, the watch is taken from the wrist. It is, at the end of the day, the individual moments of restlessness, of bleakness, of strong persuasions and maddened enthusiasms, that inform one’s life, change the nature and direction of one’s work, and give final meaning and color to one’s loves and friendships. ~ Kay Redfield Jamison

Yesterday we posted a piece which lauded a potential life saving break-through in the development of a HIV vaccination which could save millions of lives. Today, this news is tempered by a recent announcement by PlusNews a Global HIV/AIDS news and analysis publication which reports that HIV infection rates are on the increase among the intravenous drug user (IDU) populations of many African countries.

Health officials in Tanzania are worried about rising HIV-prevalence levels among IDUs, who often use a dangerous cash-saving technique known as “flash blood”, in which a user injects heroin or another illegal drug, and then draws a syringe full of blood for a second user to inject.