Cesare Vidulich, Leon Louw, a Brunch for the Brazilians and the Scourge of Hepatitis

Last Week


Cesare Vidulich talked about himself and it was fascinating.  These talks are much more interesting than 'My Job' talks because they have become very much where I come from , what my family was like etc.  Much more personal and really give us an insight into who are members are.
Despite his surname we were all under the impression that Cesare was Italian.  He is and he isn't because he was born on a small island off the Dalmatian coats that was Italian when he was born, became Yugoslavian after the 2nd World War and is now part of Croatia.

Many thanks, Cesare.

Our AG, David Price, visited us and with him came Candice de Carvalho.

I'll leave you to guess who's who.

It was also the monthly collection at Norwood Spar and congratulations to everyone because we were able to fill all the vacant spots and collect through-out Saturday and Sunday.  This is the Saturday 11.00 till 13.00 shift  whose photo appeared on Facebook, and Twitter and they held the record for collection for the day.....

This Week

Our guest speaker is Leon Louw of the Free Market Foundation of which he was the co-founder and

executive director.

The Free Market Foundation (Southern Africa) is an independent public benefit organisation founded in 1975 to promote and foster an open society, the rule of law, personal liberty, and economic and press freedom as fundamental components of its advocacy of human rights and democracy based on classical liberal principles. It is financed by membership subscriptions, donations and sponsorships.

The FMF was established to counter the steadily increasing intervention in the economy by the government of the time. Protectionism, high inflation, price controls, bureaucracy and relentless enforcement of racial discrimination all escalated during the 1970’s. In 1977 the FMF became a national body when it received the support of major institutions, including SACOB, AHI, NAFCOC, TUCSA, the National Black Consumer Union, and the National Consumer Union. Representatives of major companies played an active role in the reconstitution of the Foundation and commenced participation in its affairs.

The book, South Africa: The Solution (1986), by Leon Louw and Frances Kendall (a project initiated by the FMF) and the subsequent Let the People Govern by the same authors, provided all South Africans with positive proposals for a peaceful constitutional settlement, based on the principles of direct democracy upon which the Swiss government functions. These books and the follow-up work by the two authors had an undoubted influence on the negotiation process.

Next Week plus One Day

• The Quiz on Friday 16th November...don't forget. Victory depends on YOU!

• Brazilian Rotary Friendship Exchange Brunch 11.00 Sunday 18th November chez Wolhuter

This is being organised by James Croswell and the International Committee and he will give more details later but it will be a Bring Booze but not Food event.  It is imperative that you let him know how many of you will be there. so email him on jcroswel@iafrica.com

In 2010, Humberto Silva was getting ready to travel from Brazil to South Africa to watch his country’s soccer team play in the World Cup. When he went to get the necessary vaccinations, his doctor recommended he also be tested for hepatitis.  

Humberto Silva behind the wheel of a converted military ambulance in which two brothers, Fred Mesquita and José Eduardo, are traveling the world educating people about hepatitis.

Silva thought this was silly. He felt fine. How could he have hepatitis? When the results came back, he was shocked: He had hepatitis C. If he didn’t get treatment, his liver would fail and he would die. 

As Silva thought about how he might have contracted the disease, he remembered that when he was eight years old, he had received a blood transfusion after a surgery. If that was the source of the infection, it meant that the virus had been in his body for nearly 40 years, attacking his liver over and over.

Silva, a member of the Rotary Club of São Paulo-Jardim das Bandeiras, underwent treatment and is now free of the virus. And he knows much more about the disease. 

There are five main types of hepatitis, each of which involves a different virus that attacks the liver. The most serious are B and C. There is a vaccine for hepatitis B, which is spread through contact with blood or bodily fluids, but not for hepatitis C, which is spread almost exclusively by blood contact. There is, however, a treatment that eliminates the hepatitis C virus from the body; it costs around $120 per person. 

Roughly 325 million people worldwide live with some form of viral hepatitis, and the disease causes 1.34 million deaths per year. Globally, an estimated 71 million people are infected with hepatitis C, but only 20 percent of them have been tested and are aware of their status. For those with hepatitis B, that figure is just 9 percent.

In 2011, while he was being treated for hepatitis, Silva founded the Associação Brasileira de Portadores de Hepatite (Brazilian Association for Hepatitis Carriers), which opened a free clinic in São Paulo to test and treat people for hepatitis. “There is a finger prick test like the diabetes test,” he says. “In three minutes we can diagnose if people have hepatitis.”

This was so successful that the ABPH opened four more clinics in Brazil, plus one in Mexico City, and has seen some 60,000 people. But Silva knew there were still tens of thousands of people who were unaware of the threat that hepatitis posed to their health, just as he had been. He wondered how he could reach them all. He established Hepatitis Zero, a worldwide campaign to identify and support people with hepatitis, educate the public about the disease, and aid in eradication efforts.

In 2015, the Rotary International Convention was held in Silva’s hometown of São Paulo. So he set up a booth there to test people for hepatitis. 

At the convention, Silva spoke to Rotary’s incoming president, K.R. Ravindran, who suggested that they form the Rotarian Action Group for Hepatitis Eradication. The action group launched last year with Silva as its founding chair. 

Since then, Argentina has embarked on a nationwide campaign, and countries including Democratic Republic of Congo, Kenya, Korea, Mexico, and Nigeria have begun testing. Currently, the action group has hepatitis eradication projects in countries in the Americas and Africa. 

In the small African island nation of São Tomé and Príncipe, ABPH and the action group are working with Rotary clubs and the government to make it the first country to eradicate hepatitis. “We are going to test the whole population for hepatitis B and C,” Silva says, “and we are going to provide the medicine to the ones we find who are sick.” And that’s just one of the places where these organizations have projects underway. 

The action group is also setting up committees across Africa and recruiting ambassadors to publicize and coordinate testing in preparation for the Pan-African Week Against Hepatitis from 20 to 28 July. It is sending two testing machines to Africa and plans to organize another major campaign.

Silva hopes these will be major steps toward ridding the planet of the disease. “It’s not going to be easy,” he says. “But we are going to win. There are people who are standing on the edge of a cliff without realizing it. We’re going to tell them that they are sick and we are going to give them medicine. Rotary is going to do that.”