The JOURNEY Begins

 Day -1

June 25, 2023

OK - here is the context for this blog. I am going on vacation to South Africa and nearby places (Zimbabwe, Botswana) with the Browning family - Adam, Maria (my daughter), Elise (12) and Connor (almost 11). It has been over a year in the making (with the help of Audley Travel - SIDE NOTE: they give me a commission on referrals so please do not hesitate to contact me!!), and it is hard to believe it is actually here. So, what follows is really a personal diary so that we can all remember the great fun that we had, and we hope you will enjoy living vicariously through us on this trip.

This journey (as opposed to this trip) actually started a few months ago with vaccinations and medical consultations to help us remain healthy before and after our travels. Now this blog might be a bit dry for some since it will not detail any exciting adventures of us fighting lions in the bush, swimming up the Zambezi River to Victoria Falls or free-climbing Table Mountain in Capetown ... though we fully intend to do such things on this vacation!!! I will start with how my journey started today - with a dose of atovaquone-proguanil, which is an anti-malarial drug.

Now, here is the dry or interesting part, depending on your perspective. Malaria is the longest running, most deadly pandemic in the history of humankind. Malaria kills an estimated 2,700,000 people each year, most of them children under the age of five! Without minimizing the COVID pandemic, which marshalled global resources in unparalleled fashion to bring about a vaccine and multiple treatments, malaria has had no such full court press to halt its devastation on humankind. It has existed since 2700BC or, said differently, for the last 4700 years!! The drug I am taking greatly reduces my chances of getting malaria if bitten by the Anopheles mosquito, but it is not a vaccine or a treatment.

Also today, to begin this journey, I had to pack suitable clothing (recall it is winter in South Africa though at 33.92 degrees S latitude it is kind of equivalent to Atlanta Georgia at 33.74 degrees N latitude) that also included appropriate color selection. No black or dark blues, which attract the tsetse (teet-see teet-see) fly. This is important because the tsetse fly is an aggressive biter (like some kindergarten kids) and importantly carries the African trypanosomiasis parasite, which is the cause of the deadly African sleeping sickness. The disease is so nefarious that when the parasite (the trypanosome) gets into the human blood stream, it replicates to such a significant degree, that it eventually surpasses the number of red blood cells in the bloodstream!!! Imagine that.

Of course, this causes all sorts of problems, including people going unconscious (i.e., hence sleeping sickness) and eventually dying. Very nasty stuff. However, there is one drug that has been thoroughly tested and proven to treat and cure African sleeping sickness. It is marketed as Vaniqa (generic name: eflornithine or alpha-DFMO). Why am I telling you all this?!

Well it was developed by the Merrell Dow Research Institute in Cincinnati through the 1980's, which is where and when I started my pharmaceutical statistical career. I did some work on this drug though I played a minor role. After it failed as a cancer treatment, it was serendipitously discovered to be effective in trypanosomiasis (the aforementioned African sleeping sickness if your having trouble following along). It was approved by FDA on November 28, 1990 and other regulatory agencies followed suit. It is now on the list of WHO Essential Medicines, and has undoubtedly saved the lives of perhaps millions of people (it is VERY hard to count these things in the jungles of Africa). So, this is the glory of working in the pharmaceutical industry - we get to work on improving or saving many, many millions of lives! What a privilege!!!

OK, now I am going to go to sleep and prepare for the long plane ride on Tuesday. Stay tuned for a report on the first day of the trip [as opposed to the journey (:-) ].