Haiti

Business of building peace

Barbara Stegemann’s 7 Virtues perfumes help farmers in war- or weather-torn countries rebuild. (photo from Barbara Stegemann)

Barbara Stegemann (née Rabinovitch) was born and raised in an Anglophone neighbourhood in Montreal. While her Catholic mother disallowed any practise of Judaism, Stegemann recalled having begged her zaida to take her to synagogue to meet the rabbi.

“My soul felt very Jewish,” Stegemann told the Independent. “As Ben Stiller says, ‘When I look in the mirror, I see a Jew.’ That’s how I feel. My 23andME report came back and said I am 47.7% Ashkenazi Jew – so, science even accepts it.

“Interestingly, this genetic DNA test does not tell you if you’re Christian, Catholic or Muslim, but your DNA tells you that you are Jewish. For me, that is how powerful the connection is to being Jewish. It’s undeniably in our DNA.”

After earning a degree in journalism in 2006, Stegemann moved to British Columbia and settled in Port Moody, where she started a boutique PR firm, providing community economic development and strategy to clients from the City of Coquitlam to Mitacs, which designs and delivers research and training programs.

Then, something happened that shook Stegemann to the core. Her best friend from university and mentor, Capt. Trevor Greene, took off his helmet in a village in Afghanistan during a discussion about the need for clean drinking water and healthcare for the residents. A man attacked Greene, taking an axe to his head.

“We didn’t think he would make it through the night,” said Stegemann. “I prayed harder that night than I have ever prayed in my life. He made it through the night and, together with his fiancée, Debbie, and family, we all went on a healing journey. Since then, he married Debbie and they now have two children, Grace and Noah.

“I was blessed that I had my own company, so I could visit him in the Vancouver General three times a week. I lived in Port Moody, so it was not far. And, in the hospital, I promised him I would take on his mission of peace while he healed. Then, I realized, as a female in this patriarchy, I didn’t have a way to touch peace.”

Stegemann knew that, if women could find a way to harness their power – their buying and voting power – they had a chance to end war and corruption, two roots of poverty and suffering. With this in mind, she wrote the book The 7 Virtues of a Philosopher Queen: A Woman’s Guide to Living & Leading in an Illogical World, which was published on International Women’s Day (March 8) in 2008. A bestseller, it will see its seventh edition this year.

“I took all of the stoic wisdom of Socrates and Aurelius, the great leaders who guided [Winston] Churchill and the leaders who had to guide us out of hell,” said Stegemann. “I realized that our mothers didn’t talk to us about Adam Smith, capitalism, Plato and the polis … and that, if we, as women, were to take our rightful places changing policy and leading to an end of the cycles of war and poverty … we needed to have that same wisdom men have been given for 2,400 years.

“I used to walk around as a child with my Bible story records and play them for anyone who’d listen. My favourite story was The Wisdom of Solomon. I became entranced by the virtues and how they could change your life through their daily practice – wonder instead of judgment (which gives you all the resources you need on this earth), balance, truth, courage, justice, wisdom and beauty.”

One day, while Stegemann was studying about Afghanistan, she read about Abdullah Arsala in Afghanistan and about how Arsala was growing legal rose and orange blossom crops to liberate the farmers from growing illegal poppy crops.

She learned that the same people who had attacked her friend, Greene, were knocking over Arsala’s distillery, which made his flowers into essential oils for use in perfumes.

“I decided, that is it! I am going,” said Stegemann. “I flew to Ottawa and met with CIDA (Canadian International Development Agency) and told them to help me find Abdullah. I bought what little orange blossom oil he had on my Visa and launched The 7 Virtues [perfumes] in 2010, on International Women’s Day.

“Two weeks later, we were on the front page of the Globe and Mail. And, eight weeks later, I was on Dragons’ Den, pitching to venture capitalists. By then, I’d moved back home to my province of Nova Scotia and became the first woman from Atlantic Canada to land a venture capital deal on the popular CBC show.”

Stegemann helps farmers transition into growing legal crops, and make twice as much profit as they did growing poppies. According to Stegemann, when a farmer in Afghanistan grows legal crops for her perfumes, “His daughters are safe from being taken by the Taliban opium traders if the poppy crop fails. There is less heroin that ends up on the streets, destroying lives. And, when a farmer grows legal crops, he is honouring his faith. It goes against Islamic law to grow the illegal poppy crop.”

By helping the farmers, Stegemann believes she is helping bring peace. “It may not be my faith, but the truest way to peace is to honour one another and our beliefs,” said Stegemann. “The Taliban are completely going against their faith, forcing their neighbours to grow the illegal poppy crop. So, we must help one another.

“Our legal essential oil purchases in Afghanistan began this peace journey by liberating farmers from the illegal poppy trade and all of the abuses they and their families endure at the hands of the Taliban.

“Then, countries rebuilding after war or strife began coming to us, asking us to purchase from their distilleries to further build peace in nations rebuilding. The next country was Haiti. We began sourcing their vetiver oil.”

Stegemann travels often to Haiti to volunteer. On a trip after Hurricane Matthew hit, she was devastated to learn of a boatload of aid being turned away from the south, where not a mango stick stood and people had no shelter, as a result of the hurricane. The local official had asked for a bribe so large that the aid workers on the ship could not pay it.

“Haiti is the 10th most corrupt country in the world,” said Stegemann. “We have to engage our world leaders to end the culture of corruption in Haiti, in Afghanistan, and other nations that can’t take care of their people because their leaders are corrupt and don’t pay their police fair wages.

“There are many steps that have to be taken, but sourcing from a nation, spending time there and getting to know the issues, allows us to not only purchase fair trade products that give people dignity and jobs … but I can then write articles and be a voice as a trained journalist and activist to push our government to expect more from these countries.”

Stegemann believes social enterprise is a key way to build peace. She also believes that these cycles of war and poverty will remain if we expect our military and government to do the heavy lifting. According to Stegemann, we need a cavalry of businesses to come and buy saffron, pomegranates, essential oils or any other ethically sourced product, and this will help build peace.

It wasn’t until Stegemann moderated a panel discussion on the Middle East at a German Marshall Fund of the United States-hosted forum in Halifax that she realized the potential. On the panel were then-deputy minister of defence for Israel Matan Vilna’i and the minister of housing for the Palestinian Authority Dr. Mohammad Shtayyeh – and everyone got along.

“I feel strongly that destruction takes no imagination, no creativity, no intelligence, and it is actually boring,” said Stegemann. “I am not going to give my energy to it. Now, rebuilding, that is exciting! My real job is to make building more exciting than destruction.

“I do this through perfume. I decided to make a perfume of harmony from the Middle East. I sourced sweetie grapefruit from the Sharon region of Israel, with the help of ambassador [Miriam] Ziv. And we tried to get oils from the Palestinian region but could not.

“When I learned of Israeli Ronny Edry’s ‘We Love you Iran’ campaign, I decided to put Israel and Iran together with lime and basil essential oils from the Shiraz region of Iran. In our classic collection at the Hudson’s Bay stores, it is called Middle East Peace. It’s our bestselling fragrance and sells out quite often.”

In their new contemporary collection, launching at Sephora this month, they have a fragrance with the same oils, named after the oils – Grapefruit Lime – and the story is on the packaging, as is information about the oils’ healing properties.

On Stegemann’s most recent volunteering trip to Haiti (after Hurricane Matthew), she learned of the Sephora Accelerate program for female founders in the beauty business. As fewer than four percent of beauty company chief executive officers are women, Sephora decided to mentor, empower and create a network for these women.

“I felt so alone before,” said Stegemann. “I never had other female social entrepreneurs to share knowledge and suppliers with, and to bounce ideas off of. I wanted the program so badly that, when I first met with my Sephora buyers, I asked about this program. They immediately connected me with the women in San Francisco who run the program. They wanted the trailer to our doc film, Perfume War (perfumewar.com), and said they loved it. So, I got in. I was mentored by the director of Sephora Canada, Will Chung. They gave me the confidence to stretch out of my comfort zone and hire a branding agency.”

Going with Sephora was a hard decision for Stegemann, as that meant she had to leave the small boutiques she had built. But she was determined to stick with her mission of helping as many farmers as she could, and going big was the only way to do that.

The 7 Virtues perfumes can be found at Sephora online (sephora.com) and in stores, including the Robson, Park Royal and Richmond stores in Metro Vancouver.

Rebeca Kuropatwa is a Winnipeg freelance writer.

Training Haitian physicians

Dr. Neil Pollock, second from the left, in Haiti. (photo from Neil Pollock)

Vancouver-based Dr. Neil Pollock has recently returned from a mission to Haiti, where he trained surgeons in newborn male circumcision to help fight against HIV.

Among other benefits, “circumcision reduces AIDs transmission by 60 percent and that would reduce a man’s risk of acquiring HIV. The reason is, the foreskin has receptor cells that selectively bind the HIV virus and promote its uptake into the body. So, by removing the foreskin, you remove the portal of entry for the virus,” explained Pollock, who specializes in circumcision and adult vasectomy.

Pollock was approached to lead the Haiti mission by Dr. Jeffrey Klausner, a medical doctor and professor of medicine at UCLA, specializing in infectious disease. Klausner volunteers with GHESKIO, a nongovernmental organization run out of the Centre for Global Health at Weill Cornell Medical College in partnership with the Haitian government.

In a phone interview with the Independent, Klausner said that, around 2007/08, “evidence became very clear that circumcision was a highly effective prevention intervention for HIV and the first priority was to get adolescents and young men circumcised. And, over time, we scaled up progress for newborns.”

After moving from South Africa to Los Angeles, Klausner started working in various countries. It was in Haiti in March 2012 that he connected with GHESKIO. He said it was one of the first NGOs to respond to the AIDs crisis in the early 1980s. Through GHESKIO, he was introduced to Haiti’s first lady, Sophia Martelly, in Washington, D.C., at the International AIDs Conference. Klausner said that, when talking to Martelly about the prospect of introducing newborn circumcision to Haiti, she said, “Absolutely, we’d love to do that, but we don’t have the resources, we don’t have the technical expertise, so we really need to rely on people like you to help us.”

Klausner returned to GHESKIO and worked to organize “a physical place, the proper clean procedure room … certain types of equipment and supplies and autoclaves, sterilized surgical equipment, and the tab was running into tens of thousands, about $50,000…. Once we had the supplies and materials, then the next step was to get the training, and I’m not a surgeon. I contacted the head of circumcision programs in Kenya, a guy named Robert Bailey.”

Bailey directed Klausner to Pollock. Klausner said he was “encouraged by [Pollock’s] enthusiasm and … set up a training program for May 2014.” (see jewishindependent.ca/vancouver-doctor-will-train-doctors-in-haiti-in-circumcision) However, the mission had to be postponed to November, as just days before they were set to depart, an “outbreak of chikungunya fever hit, which is a rare [virus] that causes fever, joint pain, and about one of 100 people can get lifelong arthritis.” In addition, “there was a fire in a supply room and we lost some of the tables we had bought and one of the autoclaves,” and “a box of supplies went missing.”

Despite these and other challenges in organizing and executing the mission, such as difficulties in communication due to power outages and poor internet connections, Klausner said, “I have been doing international work, research and programs for 25 years now and [obstacles are] par for the course. This actually went smoother than many other projects [in which] I have been involved.”

For the Haiti mission, said Klausner, “We had to make sure there were at least 200 parents and babies that were already pre-examined, pre-consented, pre-educated and prepared” because for “a training program like this to be successful you really need to do between 50 to 100 [surgeries] a day in a short period with a lot of cases to make sure the people you are training learn, and learn effectively so they can go on and do this independently and confidently.”

Pollock said he had “arranged to train two surgeons, in case one of them did not have the aptitude to succeed – in the end, one did not, and it was difficult of course to tell him that, but it was clear that it would not be safe to pass him and enable him to operate on patients.”

With the use of the technique he taught in Haiti, said Pollock, recovery time will be reduced compared to current Haitian practices “because there is so little trauma caused during surgery.”

Klausner offered three measures for the mission’s success. “One is the actual conduct of safe, well-done circumcision on the babies that Dr. Pollock and his colleague Pierre Crouse did. That’s an achievement in itself: they did over 100 infants in two and a half days. The second part is that the surgeon and the teams that were trained, they continue to do it themselves, so they have done an additional 100 since we left. And then the third piece is that we have trained the trainers, and now other teams are being trained” to perform the surgery.

Klausner’s and Pollock’s efforts in combating HIV and AIDs received notice from some high-profile celebrities. “I was quite surprised to get a text from Sean Penn on the day after we landed in Port-au-Prince that he wanted to come down and meet and observe what myself and my team were doing and discuss synergies between our global interests in promoting health care,” said Pollock. Penn was joined by Charlize Theron, “who was also interested in discussing collaborative efforts in association with her foundation helping improve health care for the people in her native country of South Africa.”

Klausner said, “I have been working in eastern South Africa, KwaZulu-Natal province … with the public health leaders there to introduce a similar effort where we would train surgeons, create a permanent resource, such as a training program, to expand the number of trained doctors or medical officers in newborn circumcision.” In that province, he said, “40 percent of people have HIV infection” and “75 percent of women aged 30 have HIV. So, right now, that part of South Africa … is in a complete, out of control, HIV epidemic. I helped introduce adult circumcision there, but I think, to have greater impact in the long term, we need to introduce newborn circumcision.”

He added, “I believe Dr. Pollock had a very positive experience [in Haiti] and I suspect he is optimistic about the possibility to go and do it again elsewhere.”

Zach Sagorin is a Vancouver freelance writer.

Vancouver doctor will train physicians in Haiti in circumcision

Dr. Neil Pollock instructs a team of surgeons in Rwanda on carrying out his technique of circumcision. (photo from Dr. Neil Pollock)

Dr. Neil Pollock specializes in circumcision, from newborn to adult, and adult vasectomy. As a leading expert in circumcision, he has traveled around the world to train physicians and, this summer, he will head to Port-au-Prince, Haiti, to teach a team of doctors in medical newborn and infant circumcision.

“After carrying out 50,000 infant circumcisions and traveling recently to Turkey, China and Africa to exchange ideas, I have evolved my technique to make it applicable to infants, children, teenagers and adults,” Pollock told the Independent in a recent interview. “I have developed a technique to do circumcision in this older age group under local anesthetic without using sutures and using, instead, a cyanocrylate skin glue that closes the wound. Being able to do the procedure under local anesthetic and with skin glue instead of a general anesthetic in hospital provides for a much simpler, easier, quicker, safer and improved cosmetic outcome for patients.”

This method, he said, is unique. “I’m unaware of this approach being used anywhere in [Canada] except in my clinics. The older age group is currently requesting circumcision for reasons like reduction in disease transmission, preference of their partners and improved hygiene.”

In 2008, Dr. David Patrick was the head of the B.C. Centre for Disease Control. Pollock said he was asked by his colleague “to teach my surgical techniques for circumcision in Rwanda, where they were using scissors and stitches, without anesthetic, and their surgeons desperately required training in an alternative quick, safe and painless infant circumcision technique that would be accepted by their population. In coordination with their surgeons, I planned with my team a five-day surgical training mission that year and flew to Rwanda. I have been in contact with these surgeons by email since my trip and they have informed me that they are using my technique effectively and safely throughout the country now.

“The impact of our humanitarian effort became known in the international medical community, which led to Dr. Jeffrey Klausner, professor at [the University of California, Los Angeles] Medical School, contacting me recently and asking me to essentially replicate the work I did in Rwanda, but this time in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, where they are being overwhelmed by the number of patients requiring treatment for AIDS and would receive huge benefit from introducing a preventative strategy to reduce AIDS transmission, such as infant circumcision, which will reduce the risk of their circumcised infants later contracting AIDS when they hit sexual age, by over 60 percent. Its impact and effectiveness has been referenced metaphorically to be like a vaccine.” Circumcision, he added, “works to reduce AIDS by removing the portal of entry of the virus, which is the foreskin.”

Klausner, a professor of medicine in the division of infectious diseases and the program in global health at UCLA, is an advocate in the use of medical male circumcision for the prevention of sexually transmitted diseases and HIV. He volunteers with GHESKIO, an organization run out of the Centre for Global Health at Weill Cornell Medical College in partnership with the Haitian government. Operating primarily in Port-au-Prince, their work is supported by Haiti’s first lady and has a mission to combat HIV and improve conditions of maternal and child health. GHESKIO will host Pollock’s training in Port-au-Prince.

Raised in Winnipeg, Pollock explained that he decided to become a doctor “because I had a strong interest in sciences, medicine and surgery from a young age.” Early in his career, he decided to create a special focus on circumcision and vasectomy, and built a highly focused practice and a well-tested – and respected – technique.

“My interest in developing a safe, quick and painless approach to circumcision for the medical community in B.C. arose initially from some of the rabbis approaching me approximately 20 years ago and encouraging me to become a mohel in Vancouver,” Pollock said.

The benefits of newborn and infant circumcision are many, but the rates of the procedure vary from region to region, and remain contentious to those opposed to what’s seen as elective (non-consenting) surgeries for babies.

Pollock noted, “The most important change recently in how the medical community has come to view circumcision is expressed in the … consensus statement from the American Academy of Pediatrics released in late 2012 declaring that ‘the medical benefits of infant circumcision outweigh the risks.’ This is the strongest statement of support ever issued by the American Academy of Pediatrics.

photo - Neil Pollock in Rwanda with a happy patient. — Dr. Neil Pollock in Rwanda with an infant post-circumcision. *(photo from Dr. Neil Pollock)*

“The benefits of circumcision are multiple; they include reduction in the risk of urinary tract infection, which can lead to kidney infection and renal failure, reduced risk of cancer of the penis, cancer of the cervix in partners, reduced risk of balanitis (which is infection of the foreskin), and other foreskin-related problems, like phimosis.” As well, circumcised males also experience a “reduction of multiple sexually transmitted diseases, like HPV, herpes and AIDS transmission. The latter is exponentially more important in places like Haiti and Africa, where a large number of the population has AIDS in comparison to other regions of the world where AIDS is less common.” Possible risks include “bleeding and infection,” he added, “but, in experienced hands, risks are extremely low.”

Rwanda and Haiti share a history of national trauma, which has led in both countries to poor health outcomes. In 1994, at least 800,000 Rwandans were massacred by their countrymen in a genocide. In 2010, Haiti, already the victim of more than two centuries of extreme poverty, dictatorships and U.S.-led military interventions, experienced a 7.0 earthquake that resulted in the deaths of more than 100,000, and displaced 1.5 million of the tiny country’s 10 million people. Since then, Haitians have been hit by serious outbreaks of preventable disease, including cholera, tuberculosis and AIDS. According to the United Nations, life expectancy is 61 years for men and 64 for women.

The health challenges that Haitians are very similar to those experienced in Africa, and the training is seen as critical in addressing those obstacles. “Like there was in Rwanda, there is a need to train surgeons in Haiti to carry out a quick, safe and painless infant circumcision technique,” Pollock explained. “In regards to what accounts to gaps in circumcision rates, there may be a deficiency in trained surgeons to carry out the surgery in an acceptable manner, along with variations in social and cultural norms that influence the choice to have circumcision.”

The ultimate intention of the training, Pollock said, is “to set up a national program accepted by the population, to introduce infant circumcision safely and effectively, and have it evolve to become a widespread practice throughout the country, thereby reducing the transmission of multiple diseases, including AIDS.”

Pollock’s visit to Haiti will involve intensive training. “My goal is to carry out a similar plan to what we executed in Rwanda. I worked with physicians there weeks ahead to set up a surgical schedule of 20-to-30 infants per day, over four-to-five days of operating. After working with doctors on models that I brought to demonstrate the technique and do the primary teaching, they moved to assist me with the surgeries and eventually carry them out under my supervision on the infants booked for circumcision.”

The training in Haiti, part of a nongovernmental public health initiative, will be partially supported by charitable donations. “The commitment from my end for Haiti will include a week away from my practice and the commitment to help raise the $25,000 for the mission to take place. The plan is to raise $25,000 from the Vancouver community in the next seven days or so as to be able to launch the teaching mission in Haiti by the end of the summer. During the week in Haiti, I will train two physicians, who will then train other physicians once our team leaves. I will maintain follow-up with these physicians to help them manage any issues that should arise.” The goal is to create a sustainable public health campaign and donated funds not only will go towards covering the costs for the week, but also for “the next 500 infants once we leave.”

Readers who would like to donate to the effort “will support an initiative, which will undoubtedly over the years save thousands and thousands of lives,” Pollock said. “It’s intended that Haiti will become a training centre for circumcision in the Caribbean. It is likely that my technique, once taught in Haiti, will soon be shared with multiple countries throughout the Caribbean, multiplying its effect to save lives throughout the entire region. So, I’m asking readers and members of the community to reach deep and consider making a financial donation to help us raise $25,000 in the next [several] days to allow this mission to proceed.”

To make a donation, contact Dr. Neil Pollock at 604-644-5775 or [email protected]. “We will make it very easy for people to donate, and make arrangements for their cheques (made payable to the Vancouver Foundation) to be picked up by our team,” he said. Donations can also be mailed to 4943 Connaught Dr., Vancouver, B.C., V6M 3E8.