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HEALTHAThe Charlotte Post
Thursday November 13, 1997
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HEALTH
Kenyan cousins may be link to cure
By Karin Davies
THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
MAJENGO, Kenya - The two
cousins have a lot in common.
Divorced and desperately poor,
both work as prostitutes out of
their tiny, tin-roofed huts in a no
hope slum to feed their children.
They share intimacies, child
care duties, and meals and money
when one needs a hand the other
can give.
Hawa Chelangat, 34, and
Hadija Chemutai, 31, also share
what to them is a blessing in their
otherwise cursed lives — they are
apparently immune to the deadly
AIDS virus.
“Because my blood has
remained clean, I just feel it is
God who has been good to me,”
said Chelangat, a devout Muslim.
“It’s luck, and God has been so
good.”
As a prostitute for 14 years on a
continent where more than half
the world’s 23 million HlV-infect-
ed people hve, she is, indeed,
lucky to be free of the AIDS virus.
Since AIDS appeared in Kenya in
the early 1980s, the sexually
transmitted disease has infected
95 percent of the prostitutes who
work in the Majengo slum on the
outskirts of Nairobi.
The cousins are among just 60
women out of 1,864 who have vis
ited the Majengo clinic for prosti
tutes since 1985 and remained
HIV-negative for three or more
years.
“We think they are immune to
HIV,” said Dr. Frank Plummer, a
University of Manitoba physician
who is principal researcher at the
clinic. “We are calling it resistant
-we are not calling it immune -
blit we have a lot of evidence that
their immune systems are able to
refognize and kill HIV.”
Diabetes
incidence
rising
By Tara Meyer
THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
ATLANTA—A fatter, less active
and older America has helped
push diabetes to its highest levels
yet in the United States.
As of 1997, about 10 million peo
ple have been diagnosed with dia
betes, the Centers for Disease
Control and Prevention said
Thursday. Nearly 6 million more
people have the disease and don’t
know it. The figures represent a
sixfold increase from 1.6 million
in 1958.
“We are becoming a more over
weight population, we are less
active and we are also getting
somewhat older,” said Dr. Frank
Wnicor, director of the CDC’s dia
betes division. “If you put all of
those factors together, we are see
ing a chronic disease epidemic
occurring.”
It isn’t just a U.S. problem. The
CDC and the World Health
Organization estimate that 125
million people worldwide have
diabetes, a number expected to
double by the year 2025.
“Diabetes is a common disease,
a serious disease and it’s a very
costly disease,” said Linda Geiss,
surveillance chief of the CDC’s
diabetes division.
Diabetes - a condition in which
blood sugar levels rise out of con
trol, causing nerve damage - is
the fourth leading cause of death
by disease in the United States. It
also is a leading cause of kidney
failure, non-traumatic amputa
tions, heart disease, stroke and
blindness.
'The CDC estimates 15.7 million
people in the United States cur
rently have diabetes. In its early
stages, the symptoms are not very
apparent. Diabetes is caused by a
deficiency of insulin, a hormone
that controls blood sugar and is
secreted by the pancreas.
Between 1980 and 1994, dia
betes rose 33 percent among
blacks, from 40.1 diagnosed cases
for every 1,000 people to 53.5
cases per 1,000. Among whites
during the same years, the rate
rose 11 percent, from 23.8 cases
per 1,000 to 26.4.
If the source of the women’s pro
tection can be identified, it could
yield new clues for creating a vac
cine against AIDS, Plummer and
researchers not involved with the
clinic said.
That Chelangat and Chemutai
are cousins is important.
Researchers have strong evidence
HIV-resistance clusters in fami
lies.
“We think there's something
fundamentally different about
their immune systems that is
mediated by genetics, and we’re
trying hard to track it down,”
Plummer said.
It isn’t just safe sex that has
kept the prostitutes HIV-free, he
insisted.
They, too, sometimes contract
other sexually transmitted dis
eases, such as gonorrhea or
syphilis, a sign that they don’t
always use condoms. Women in
the study for a decade, including
the cousins, would have experi
enced about 500 unprotected
exposures to the AIDS virus,
Plummer said.
To feed their families, the
cousins entertain about five men
a day each for the going rate of 20
Kenyan shillings, about 30 cents.
That is the price of a loaf bread,
not enough to buy a cold Coke.
The cheap price is what makes
the prostitutes of Majengo so pop
ular. Men come by for a few min
utes on the way to work or at
lunchtime. Women like
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Chelangat and Chemutai are just
another commodity in the run
down, square-mile market town
within sight of the towers of
downtown Nairobi.
Amid the poverty, Chelangat
and Chemutai are working moth
ers struggling to provide for their
families. 'They are self-employed -
there are no brothels, no pimps in
Majengo. They work during the
day while their children are at
school.
Both women turned to prostitu
tion - Chelangat in 1983 and
Chemutai in 1987 - because
divorces left them with no
incomes and children to support.
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