Fun in Dublin, educational outreach and thoughts on disease awareness

I have had a really lovely time and memorable stay so far in Ireland and have tried to keep myself busy over the last few weeks. One of the best social activities of the recent past was going with Hayley to watch a  Canadian band called Great Lake Swimmers perform in Dublin – although the night rushed past very quickly and before I knew it I had to be on the last train to Maynooth.

Great Lake Swimmers in Dublin

The last week has rolled by really fast. At the beginning of the week I attended a two-day Irish Flow Cytometry Society conference which had a strong international presence. I had the pleasure of listening to the details of interesting scientific work which has been completed recently, and some of the presenters were students from Derek’s lab. The conference was at the National Science Gallery, Trinity College. Flow cytometry is one of the techniques I am doing at the moment. In my next blog I will write about the lab work in detail.

I also received the Young Investigators Award to enable me to travel to San Francisco in February to attend CROI 2010 (Conference on Retroviruses and Opportunistic Infections) where I will present an abstract from part of my research findings during my masters programme. The CROI is a large scientific gathering where renowned scientists present their work. This is a big achievement for me and I hope to meet colleagues in the area of pediatric infectious diseases and possibly form research collaborations with them.

School workshop

On Sunday evening, Neema (my Tanzanian counterpart) and I travelled to the countryside by train and went to Joseph Clowry’s house, where we spent the night. We planned our talks for outreach that evening and it was nice to sit in front of a traditional Irish fire trying to keep warm: this gave me a nostalgic feeling. We also spent time talking with Joseph about some of the ‘culture shock’ that we have felt when we arrived in Ireland and had a good long chat.

In the morning we woke up to the usual Irish rain and set off to the parish centre in Carlow where we were to hold the workshops. The group consisted of Patsy Toland (Self-Help Africa), Darren, Neema, Joseph and I. The workshops were on developmental education which is being slowly introduced in Irish schools, particularly through conducting workshops. This is a forum whereby Irish students are exposed to international issues such as human rights, war and conflict resolution, diseases and poverty. This particular day’s topics were: peace and conflict in Israel and Palestine, focus on development and HIV/AIDS. The children came from two secondary schools: Colaiste Lorcain and Knockdege College, a boys’ boarding school. Introductory remarks were given by Patsy, who spoke about the choices that are made daily and the possible impacts they have on developing countries.  For example, there are big factories in the world which, in some developing countries, have really failed to recognise the rights of their workers.

We were later divided into three groups to attend the three workshops for the whole day. My group was made up of Joseph, Neema and I. We began with the first group, and I gave the workshop assisted by Joseph. We started off by asking very simple questions, such as: what does HIV/AIDS stand for, how can you contract the infection? Do you think someone suffering from HIV infection is skinny? To be honest these children had no idea about HIV and some thought that HIV can be contracted by being bitten by a mosquito. This left me wondering how there can be such a lack of knowledge of one of the biggest pandemic diseases in history – one which is mainly fuelled by social circumstances, is difficult to prevent and is currently rising again - not in Africa this time, but in Europe! Will these children and many more like them make wise choices to keep themselves safe? I really think the education system needs to urgently incorporate such topics in order to strengthen their effort against new and unnecessary HIV infections, especially in light of the economic recession.  For a country that is at the forefront of providing support to Africa as far as HIV/AIDS issues are concerned, the least it can do is to educate its own young generation about the basics of HIV, as they are so vulnerable to contracting the virus through such a profound lack of knowledge.  I strongly believe that this lack of knowledge of a crippling and yet preventable disease should be urgently addressed because this is a fertile ground for fuelling a new and more deadly HIV upsurge. Globalisation, coupled with high sexual activity in the young generation (as we know in 2007 the age group with the highest transmission is 15 – 25 years), means many are bound to fall victims of HIV and thus suffer its devastating effects.

Given that the highest increase of HIV infections have been occurring in Eastern European countries, and with the open borders of the European Union, these unequipped teenagers will fall prey to HIV when it could have been prevented by education.

The other issue that I found really odd was the fact that secondary schools do not have collaborative interactive programmes - I was under the impression that they all work in isolation and I really see this as a source of immerse weakness as there is little opportunity for maximized youth interaction. Young children can teach each other better through debating clubs, games, such as soccer competitions, music and even social events between schools which can act as a platform for new friendships and academic excellence. Young children from different schools in the same area really need to interact and this would be fruitful if planned regularly.

I would like to congratulate the different groups and organisations of people who are involved in developmental education, and would like to see this change of knowledge acquisition amongst the Irish children. I hope that they are given support for their noble cause.