For centuries, malaria has stolen children from their parents. And stolen health and wealth from communities.
Ending malaria in our lifetime is a real possibility.
On #WorldMalariaDay, I call for governments and partners to expand access to vaccines, next-generation nets and effective medicines to end malaria.
This needs to be said. Today, I caught two interns laughing at a patient in the psych ward. It felt like a gut punch. Schizophrenia isn't a "psycho" trope from a movie...
I have watched a dear family member fight this battle. To see medical professionals or anyone treat a patient’s shattered reality as a punchline is unacceptable. These individuals aren't "crazy"... they are fighting an exhausting war against their own senses. We need to trade the mockery for some damn empathy.
The Reality of Schizophrenia
1. A Hostile Reality: Imagine your brain glitching so that you can no longer distinguish between a dream and the waking world.
2. The Unstoppable Voices: It’s not just "thoughts." It is hearing screams or whispers as clear as a person standing behind you, often mocking or commanding you.
3. Sensory Terror: The brain can manufacture the feeling of insects crawling under the skin or the taste of poison in ordinary food.
4. The Paranoia Trap: A physiological "alarm" in the brain stays stuck on "ON," making you feel hunted by everyone even those trying to help you.
5. Cognitive Crumbling: The ability to string a simple sentence together disappears, leaving the person trapped in a "word salad" they can’t escape.
6. Emotional Erasure: It can strip away the ability to feel joy or even move your face, leaving you a flat prisoner inside your own body.
7. Loss of Self: The illness often causes "Anosognosia," where the brain is too damaged to even realize it is sick, making the terror feel 100% real.
8. Physical Brain Changes: This isn't "all in the head"...MRI scans show actual tissue loss and enlarged ventricles as the disease progresses.
9. Social Death: Long before any physical danger, the stigma kills the patient's life, leaving them isolated in a world that laughs at their suffering.
10. The Exhaustion: Imagine living every second in a "haunted house" that you can never leave. That is the daily exhaustion of a schizophrenia patient.
To anyone reading this: please, look past the diagnosis and see the person. Empathy is the only medicine we can give when the world stops making sense 🙏