Nurse Swaps Medicine for Mangos After Epiphany: Patients Were Malnourished While Fruit Rots All Around
By Andy Corbley – May 23, 2025
*** begin quote ***
In Uganda, a nurse was excited to start practicing medicine, but realized only afterwards that his patients didn’t so much need pharmaceuticals as proper nutrition.
14 years ago in northern Uganda’s Yumbe district, Francis Asiku was riding home from that nursing job having witnessed a four-year-old suffering from acute malnutrition. It was a disturbing experience he admits, but while passing by some mango trees in the village of Midigo, he saw birds feasting on mangos that were rotting on the ground.
A question stopped his pedals and his mind: why were the birds eating that nutritious fruit? Why was it left to rot? The epiphany which followed gave rise to the Mango Project, a local-led initiative to preserve mangoes from the two harvests per years, and get them into the mouths of the least-fortunate children.
*** and ***
“Should we wait for the government to come to our rescue, and yet the situation keeps getting worse?” he remembers asking his earliest colleagues on the Mango Project.
*** and ***
Asiku has become a local champion and educator for proper childhood nutrition, armed with an orchard of 310 hybrid mango trees bred to resist fruit flies and erratic weather. He knows that mangos alone can’t resolve the problem: for example they contain virtually no protein or iron, vitamin B2, B1, choline, or zinc.
So in response to the interest in the project from donations, Asiku managed to squirrel away enough money to afford a solar-powered drier, with which he dries okra and eggplant, adding sources of vitamin K, B1, magnesium, and calcium.
He hopes to obtain a government license to distribute his foods further afield.
*** end quote ***
Amazing what one human can accomplish from a simple observation and follow thru.
I was shocked at his realization that Gooferments really don’t help and often frustrate solutions.
If the fellow had a GOFUNDME, then I’d have chipped in. A few dollars may translate into saved lives.
Never underestimate the power of one motivated individual.
“Everything is theoretically impossible, until it is done.” — Robert A. Heinlein
“Give me the place to stand, and I shall move the earth.” Attributed to Archimedes of Syracuse (c. 287 BC – c. 212 BC) was a Greek mathematician, philosopher, scientist and engineer.
This fellow found his lever, his place, and moved the world!
—30—
Reinke Faces Life 