Last weekend I made contact with Ms. Josephine Karungi. We have had several chat conversations about how to work together to help Paul, and others like him. Josephine is the Head of News at NTV News Uganda. (see the live feed at the bottom of this update)
Josephine said that when Paul heard the news from CoRSU hospital that each of his remaining 3 boys had Duchenne Muscular Dystrophy (DMD) also, he was distraught.
You could probably imagine!
My heart goes out to Paul. He withdrew from CoRSU and so Josephine let it go for a little while. She is now trying to contact CoRSU again this week to try to re-establish contact with Paul.
Please pray. I’m sure you could imagine how difficult this is for Paul. After having lost his first 2 boys to DMD, to find out that this is the disease that plagued them, and then to find out that his remaining 3 boys have it too!
Devastating. Plus its a LOT of work taking care of them. Especially when conditions are so poor and remote in the village that he lives in.
The good news is that we have the local head of news in Kampala (Uganda), Josephine Karungi, on our side and she is willing to work with us to help Paul.
She also mentioned that she would be willing to contact local celebrities in Kampala to see who would like to join the cause.
My thought is that there are more boys in Uganda and the surrounding countries that need our help and support as well.
Here are some sobering statistics:
- According to Duchenne UK, the statistics are that 1 in 3500 boys are born with DMD.
- According to Quora, there are 365,000 births per day.
- According to all of the sources I see on a simple Google search, roughly half of all births are boys – slightly more actually. (Infoplease is one of the sources)
- That means that 52 boys are born every day with DMD.
Conclusion: new boys every day are being born every day who need our help. Please join The Everett and Austin Project in any way that you can. Thank you!
Here is the live feed for NTV News…