In Uganda, Joey Blake an associate professor at Berklee College of Music and Kim Thuita are making a difference in the culture, by bringing the healing powers of music to bear in a positive effort to unite the community.

Using Music to Heal

It is a Tuesday night at the Kigali Serena Hotel, and Joey Blake is serenading the waiter with his dinner order. “I would like some pork chops,” Blake croons into the microphone. “Pork chops, please, some pork chops.”

As the waiter takes down Blake’s order, a growing audience fills the hotel lounge and multiple voices begin to clamor. “‘Ladies’ Night’, Joey! Play ‘Ladies’ Night!’” says one fan. “Do ‘September’!” demands another.

It is 11 PM and Blake, an associate professor at the Berklee College of Music, has already performed the “last song” of the evening four times. Still, Blake winks at pianist, Kim Thuita, who responds with a head shake and a laugh. Moments later, the opening beats of ‘Ladies’ Night’ immediately rouses cheers and audience members stand and push aside chairs and tables for an impromptu dance party.

The informal jam session at Serena Hotel on May 29 marked the end of an eventful and music-filled four days in Kigali, during which Blake led music training workshops to patients of WE-ACTx (Women’s Equity and Access to Care and Treatment), a medical organization in Rwanda that provides medical treatment, psycho-social care, legal and work counseling to over 3500 patients.

The workshops followed-up on Blake’s first trip to Rwanda – and Africa – three months earlier as an ambassador for Musicians without Borders (MwB), an NGO that uses the power of music to bridge divides and heal communities in areas torn by war. In February, the multi-talented artist, who has recorded and produced five albums with ten-time Grammy Award winner Bobby McFerrin, already knew he would return to Rwanda.

“I grew up as a child admiring Martin Luther King, Jr. and Gandhi – these people who were ambassadors of peace and harmony and community,” says Blake. “Music was my way to find a way to create something like that in the world.”

Blake makes a statement – not just with a voice that is as silky smooth as it is rhythmically percussive – but with a lifelong dedication to promoting harmony and changing the world through music.

“For me, music is a way to communicate with people: a way to lift the spirit,” says Blake.

At Blake’s music workshops, youth leaders at WE-ACTx took turns practicing and then teaching the musical skills they had gained. As the designated teachers introduced concepts and led singing activities, other youth leaders participated as hypothetical students whose antics frequently disrupted lessons with hilarity and laughter.

“Knowing some of the things that [these patients] are going through with their personal lives, it’s inspiring for me to see their enthusiasm and their pride and strength,” says Blake.

Umutoni Nadine, one of the youth leaders at WE-ACTx, smiles when she talks about how music has changed her life. “Music has helped me to forget about the bad things I have to go through and to be happy,” says Umutoni, 18. “It’s important for me because I want to know it and I want to teach other kids.”

Sustainability of the music training, however, is a key focus of MwB as it moves forward with the program, says Danny Felsteiner, project manager of MwB. “One of our main goals is to create a strong network of local musicians and organizations, and to train the youth leaders not only to do music, but also to coordinate and manage parts of the program,” says Felsteiner. “Based on our experience in other countries, we’ve learned that without building local capacity that can support durability and sustainability, projects cannot succeed.”

To that aim, MwB has formed partnerships with local musicians and institutions. In addition to the connection with WE-ACTx, MwB has also gained support from the Kigali Music School and three local musicians – Aline Gahongayire, Moise Mutangana, and Kim Thuita – who will continue the work in between the training weeks when the MwB team is not in Rwanda.

Back at Berklee, Blake has started an organization called “Singing Tribe” that uses music to connect and build communities. Blake hopes that the Singing Tribe will be able to visit countries like Rwanda to create partnerships with local organizations and even develop scholarship programs that give talented local musicians the opportunity to attend Berklee. The Singing Tribe also serves as a model – a microcosm where people from different backgrounds and nationalities can come together in mutual appreciation of music.

“There’s 25 of us from fourteen different countries,” says Blake. “We’re enjoying and sharing music together – there’s no reason why the world can’t do the same.”

http://allafrica.com/stories/201206111535.html

Joey Blake and Kim Thuita are showing that there is hope for healing and the health of nations with peace, love and understanding.  And of course Music!

What snapped this epidemic into focus for the “Deans of Drugs?”  Why the new “green light?”  When the drug manufactures saw tens of millions of new customers to sell to, and a new market opening in the eastern world where the bad eating habits of the westerners’ are being mimicked, they geared up R&D in their labs quicker than you can say hypoglycemia!

Experimental diabetes drugs offer patients hope

By LINDA A. JOHNSON | Associated Press – Sun, Jun 10, 2012

TRENTON, N.J. (AP) — Some experimental diabetes treatments in late testing offer patients hope of better controlling their blood sugar and weight and preventing dangerously low blood sugar, all big challenges for millions of diabetics.

Results from studies of several new diabetes medicines and insulin products, just announced at the premiere U.S. conference for diabetes specialists, likewise hold the promise of billions in annual revenue for drugmakers that have dominated the diabetes market and for others breaking into it. They have been presenting their data at the American Diabetes Association conference, held in Philadelphia from last Friday through Monday.

Until the last decade, relatively few companies made treatments for diabetes, a chronic condition in which the body either does not make enough insulin to break down the sugar in foods or uses insulin inefficiently.

Now many more drugmakers have jumped in, as the number of American diabetes patients is about 26 million and growing fast, and there are tens of millions more in Western Europe, China and India.

That’s because the global obesity epidemic has caused a similar explosion of diabetes cases. About 95 percent are Type 2 diabetes, usually related to being overweight and sedentary. Type 2, once called adult-onset diabetes, now is also being diagnosed in adolescents, just like insulin-dependent Type 1 diabetes, which used to be called juvenile diabetes.

Both types can cause early death or devastating complications — blindness, amputations, stroke, kidney disease, heart disease and more — when too-high blood sugar steadily damages organs and blood vessels.

Roughly $200 billion a year is spent on treating diabetes and indirect costs such as missed work and premature death, according to the diabetes association.

Last year, U.S. spending on diabetes medicines among insured patients for the first time exceeded spending on cholesterol drugs, according to Express Scripts, a top prescription benefit manager.

“We expect the key diabetes brands and markets to exhibit sustainable high-single-digit growth,” reaching about $54 billion a year by 2020, Jefferies & Company analyst Jeffrey Holford recently wrote to investors. He cited an aging Western population, more health care use and adoption of Western diets in emerging countries, and increased use of new treatments and combination therapies.

Holford expects Denmark’s Novo Nordisk AS to remain the top diabetes company by revenue but Eli Lilly and Co. of Indianapolis to overtake France’s Sanofi SA as the No. 2 player by 2017.

Among other research, the conference highlighted promising new treatments likely to be approved in the next few years:

—Novo Nordisk on Friday reported on results of degludec, its ultra-long-acting insulin for patients with Type 2 diabetes. Its yearlong, 1,030-patient study compared degludec with Sanofi’s Lantus, the world’s top-selling insulin. Degludec reduced low blood sugar during the night, when it’s most dangerous, by 36 percent and also reduced severe hypoglycemia significantly, compared to Lantus. Those problems occurred less than once in a year in both groups of patients, though.

Novo also reported on other studies finding that because degludec is active in the body for more than the standard 24 hours for long-acting insulins, patients can maintain good blood sugar control even if they don’t take it at the same time every day. The Food and Drug Administration was to decide whether to approve U.S. sales by June 29, but just pushed that back until Oct. 29 to allow more time to review data.

—Johnson & Johnson’s Janssen Research unit presented five late-stage studies on its daily Type 2 diabetes pill, canagliflozin, part of a newer class of diabetes drugs called SGLT2 inhibitors. They work primarily by increasing how much glucose is excreted in urine. One yearlong study found it reduced long-term blood sugar levels, called A1C levels, and also helped patients lose much more weight than Merck & Co.’s blockbuster pill Januvia. Januvia is in a class called DPP-4 inhibitors, which increase the body’s release of insulin after a meal.

Another study similarly showed canagliflozin decreased A1C levels and body weight significantly more than Sanofi’s diabetes pill Amaryl. J&J applied for U.S. approval of its drug on May 29.

—On Sunday afternoon, Eli Lilly and partner Boehringer Ingelheim of Germany released results from two mid-stage studies of their new short-acting insulin, known as LY2605541. In separate studies comparing it to Lantus, it was slightly better at reducing blood sugar levels in Type 1 diabetics and about the same in Type 2 diabetics. In the eight-week Type 1 study, patients getting LY2605541 lost about 2.5 pounds on average while those on Lantus gained 1.5 pounds. Weight changes were similar, but smaller, in the Type 2 study.

LY2605541 still must go through late-stage testing before approval can be sought.

—Other companies were presenting data on an experimental patch to deliver insulin pain-free and two devices in early development that would work like an artificial pancreas, monitoring blood sugar continuously to help control when an insulin pump releases the hormone into the patient’s blood.

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Linda A. Johnson can be followed at http://twitter.com/LindaJ_onPharma

http://news.yahoo.com/experimental-diabetes-drugs-offer-patients-hope-203134671–finance.html

We’ll keep an eye on the testing and progression of these new medical advances.  In the meantime, knock off the fast food and empty-neutrition in-between-meal snacks.  Drink more water, and get some exercise.  Like the man said “Just do it!”