A photo from open sources
In northern Colombia, high in the mountains lies the city of Yarumal with a population of 45 thousand people. Yarumals consider themselves the most unfortunate people on earth, and his city – damned by God. Here – the world’s largest concentration of patients with a terrible ailment – Alzheimer’s disease.
Terrible affliction
Alzheimer’s disease is nothing more than brain damage. More often total victims are older people. Patients start by ask about the same thing several times, forget the way home, cannot name the current month. Over time, control is lost. even over the functions of the body, a person turns into “plant”.
For a long time the disease was considered a natural consequence of achieving elderly man, and only in 1906 German psychiatrist Alois Alzheimer identified him as a separate disease. The disease knows no class differences. Her victims were the president of the USA Ronald Reagan and British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, footballer Ferenc Puskas and actors Peter Falk (Lieutenant Colombo) and Annie Girardeau. After a diagnosis is made, the doctors take the patient to on average no more than 7 years of life, 14 years with such a diagnosis live less 3% of patients. There is no cure for the disease.
In Jarumal, every 10th person is sick with Alzheimer’s disease. Disease it is called “la bobera” and it mows not only old people in the city. 30-year-old weak-minded people are quite familiar here. Here’s another a young man comes to the store and takes out a list of necessary purchases. Only 2 items are listed: milk and bananas. 40 year old a woman leaving home leaves all doors and gates open the house. Neighbors dejectedly shake their heads: la bobera! Soon her will have to feed from a spoon, then from a bottle, and then intravenously. In the end, death will come.
A photo from open sources
A familiar situation is when 30 – 40-year-old patients are cared for their elderly parents. And everyone in the city lives with the thought “when will my turn come? ”
What is the reason?
The legend is alive in the city that once in Yarumal they robbed a blind man priest collecting money for the temple. When residents did not heed entreaties to return the money, the holy father cursed the city. Scientists don’t believe in legends and for many years they have been exploring this strange phenomenon. how showed a survey of residents, the carrier of the gene for the disease is every second Yarumal. Why are carriers of a dangerous gene here so many? Scientists see the reason for the isolation of the city.
Founded at the end of the 18th century, Jarumal lived closed for centuries life, marriages between half-blood relatives here were not a rarity, and between two and second cousins - almost by the rule. And now, the Yarumal people do not seek to leave their city, and visitors here are a rarity. Who brought this gene here is no longer find out but over the years the disease has taken root among the population Yarumalya.
Each resident of the city can be tested and find out whether he is a carrier of a terrible gene. If yes, then he will have to live with this terrible knowledge. Many of the youth having gone examination and finding out the terrible truth, make a decision never have neither family nor children. As Andres Quintero, 19, said, “ two sisters and a brother died before my eyes from la bobero. I do not want doom their children to such suffering. ”
A light in the end of a tunnel
Dr. Francisco Lopera is a native of Yarumal. After one of his relatives died of Alzheimer’s, he decided devote yourself to the fight against this ailment. Today Dr. Lopera leads the national disease control program Alzheimer’s. “We start the fight too late when the brain man is already destroyed. And you have to intervene at an early stage, when the disease just made itself known. ”
He has no shortage of voluntary assistants in Yarumal. Volunteers talk with relatives of the deceased and urge them to give brain of a deceased to study. About 300 gene-volunteers expressed willingness to take the course injection developed at the university drug, because not imagine life in the form of “just a body.”
As one of them said: “If I get sick, I will kill myself, the main thing is not to forget about it. ”
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