Pages Menu
Categories Menu
New Tool to Fight Deadly Tsetse Fly

New Tool to Fight Deadly Tsetse Fly

After 10 years of effort, a team led by scientists at Yale has finally decoded the genes of the tsetse fly, a bloodsucking scourge of Africa. Click here to read full article....

Read More
DFMO Story

DFMO Story

Dr. Cyrus Bacchi writes his account of a discovery of a cure for African trypanosomias for our kfwh website. Dr. Bacchi works at Haskins Laboratories in New York City. Cyrus J. Bacchi, Ph.D. Haskins Laboratories Pace University 41 Park Row, New York, NY 10038   March 21, 2006 DFMO Story In 1974, my laboratory at Pace University began studying an enzyme (GPDH) which is critical to the cell respiration of African trypanosomes. The enzyme needed the metal magnesium for full activity, but the magnesium could be replaced by the polyamines spermidine or spermine. Polyamines are small molecules which are required by all cells for division and growth. Polyamines have many functions in cells including interacting with DNA, RNA to stabilize it, and stimulating processes like protein and nucleic acid synthesis. The fact that the magnesium was replaced by polyamines in activation of the GPDH was interesting and I was encouraged to pursue polyamine metabolism in trypanosomes by my Ph.D. mentor, the late Dr. Seymour H. Hutner. Since intracellular polyamines are...

Read More
Kids for World Health Presents: “My Trip to Uganda: A Journey to the Human Spirit” – with photographic journal

Kids for World Health Presents: “My Trip to Uganda: A Journey to the Human Spirit” – with photographic journal

Africa…As a child, I dreamed of the visual map of a distinctively shaped continent far far away; images of jungle-like landscapes, tall grass, roaming hungry lions, rambunctious chimpanzees, and a doctor named Albert Schweitzer. I remember asking the questions, as assuredly most of us do, as to why we are born to different parts of the world, each of us with a life to live…often finding ourselves in very different centers of what appears to be inequitable opportunity. And underlying that cultural stamp, I often asked myself, “What is it that we do share…and how visible are our human spirits within the recognition of what we hold in common as residents of our life-embraced planet? As our generation grew, the world suddenly became smaller, and the concept of Pangaea continents seemed to become a virtual reality, clearly making possibilities of understanding more feasible and necessary across our globe. As communication became more accessible and technology allowed for direct visitations, the continents seemed to shift once again, giving real opportunities...

Read More
“Kids for World Health: A Voice for Life”

“Kids for World Health: A Voice for Life”

Speech for the International Scientific Council for Trypanosomiasis Research and Control with power-point September 21, 2009 Kampala, Uganda Kay Kobbe, Presenting President of Kids for World Health Wait ten seconds.. It is with great Joy and privilege that I am present among you representing Kids for World Health here in Uganda. It is an honor to have an opportunity to share the work of our young people…and as you have heard, they are indeed here in Spirit. What a gift it has been to learn, to expand our understandings, and to broaden our worlds. Photo of kids reading in the classroom. Begun in a class of 18 third graders nine years ago, Kids for World Health emerged among my students as a collective understanding that all people deserve the chance for Life.. with whatever struggles it may hold. It was founded as a compassionate response to the thousands of people who die each year from Trypanosomiasis, knowing that a cure exists in the western world, but for them was...

Read More