The Spread of Charity
July 21, 2002
By Frank Brieaddy
Staff writer
A new Central New York charity has launched an ambitious plan to bring modern research and treatment of HIV/AIDS to an impoverished area in Nigeria where people with the disease are shunned and go mostly without medical care.
The goal is to raise about $600,000 over the next few years to build and supply at least one clinic in the state of Abia, Nigeria, and offer it as a model for dealing with the infection across Africa, said Ron Stott, a North Syracuse businessman who is leading the effort here.
Stott, formerly mayor of North Syracuse and a county legislator, was part of a Central New York delegation that visited Abia in June. He said he and his wife, Carol, were frequently brought to tears by the desperation of the people there.
" 'My people are dying like rats,'" Stott said he was told by Umekwe Jiaza, chief of the Nnono-Oboro village where local landholders offered a site for a clinic.
He said Homeland Charities, a federally registered charity in Syracuse with a counterpart agency in Nigeria, is likely to open its first clinic in the nearby city of Umuahia where the organization has already signed an agreement with Abia's governor.
Homeland Charities was formed in 1999 by Dr. Henry Chionuma, a Nigerian native and practicing internist in Liverpool, with collaboration from local, nationally recognized physicians specializing in HIV/AIDS and local religious leaders in the human services field.
Sister Kathleen Osbelt, director of Francis House, a residence for the dying, last year turned over leadership of Homeland Charities to Stott, who has secured government nonprofit status and helped to raise $70,000 already for the cause.
Among the initial goals of the organization is to provide to newborns a drug, commonly available in the United States, that prevents transmission of HIV from mothers to their children in 70 percent of cases.
"Our thought was that was something we could do almost immediately," said Stott. "All we have to do is raise the money."
Chionuma said that decision reflects a complementary difference in approach between Stott - a pragmatic businessman, chief executive officer of Datacom Systems - and him. The doctor is focusing on the global impact of research that can be conducted in Abia.
"To save the children that are being born is an honorable thing to do," he said. "But it constitutes only a drop in the bucket."
According to statistics from UNAIDS (the primary global organization dealing with the disease) and the World Health Organization, 28.5 million of the 40 million people living with HIV/AIDS worldwide are in Africa. Nigeria is the continent's most populous nation; and has one of the highest rates of HIV infection, 5.8 percent, resulting in 170,000 deaths in 2001, and 1 million AIDS orphans. Nigeria's minister of health estimates the epidemic is spreading at one infection a minute.
"Why should somebody worry about something 3,600 miles from here? That is the key," said the doctor.
He said research suggests a genetic connection between the alarming growth of HIV/AIDS infection among Africans and the documented growing infection rates in the U.S. African-American population here that requires extensive study.
"The information that we learn in Africa helps us here," he said.
The UNAIDS conference recently completed in Barcelona ended with a recommendation for the expenditure of up to $10 billion to fight the AIDS epidemic, the leading cause of death in Africa and the fourth leading cause of death in the world.
"We have the opportunity to use this situation not only to help them over there, but to help us here," said Chionuma. He said that the venture could fuel both global medical advancements and the local economy.
He said he envisions grants for research that would be shared between Syracuse and Nigeria. The Homeland Charities scientific advisory board is headed by Dr. Bernard Poiesz of SUNY Upstate Medical University - a former member of the National Cancer Institute team that discovered the connection between viruses and cancer, now heading research for a better, faster AIDS test - along with Syracuse University chemistry professor Philip Boyer, who is studying the structure of the human immunodeficiency virus, and Coleen Cunningham, an Upstate Medical pediatric AIDS research and treatment specialist.
Given such local expertise, Chionuma said Syracuse should be a player in the international AIDS research movement. He regards initial dollars raised locally as seed money for staff that will eventually produce far more activity.
"Once we get the staffing, I promise you, Syracuse will be on the map," he said.
? 2002 The Post-Standard. Used with permission.
charities that are abroad may be harder to volunteer for and easier to donate to.
