Leave it to former Navy SEALs to decide that the best way to get their lives back on track following a series of health crises is to scale Africa’s highest peak: Mt. Kilimanjaro.
Twenty-six year old Will Cannon, of Houston, Texas, is one such climber. Cannon was a sergeant in the Army serving in Afghanistan when he lost his right leg (and his best friend) in an explosion. Unfortunately, his bad luck didn’t end there. After leaving the Army, he was diagnosed with testicular cancer and underwent radiation.
During the cancer treatments, Cannon’s spirits sank. But now that he’s in remission, he’s hoping to rejuvenate himself and others by joining a team of wounded veterans who plan to scale Mt. Kilimanjaro in Tanzania. Cannon will be on hand to help two Navy SEALs who lost both of their legs in service — Bo Reichenbach and Dan Cnossen — complete the difficult ascent. (Cnossen, a Topeka, Kansas native, recently competed at the Paralympics in Sochi, Russia in Nordic skiing.)
Cannon told Roberta MacGinnis of the Houston Chronicle that it’s especially difficult for a Navy SEAL to cope with physical disability. “We are, in our minds, 10 feet tall and bullet proof. We are men. So whenever one of us gets hurt — loses his legs for instance — and we come home, you know, and what do we do? What are we supposed to do? At one point I was leading men into battle, and now I can’t even walk.”
The mountain climbing expedition is part of the Phoenix Patriot Foundation’s mission to bring together small groups of veterans to foster the military bond they miss when their service is over. Jared Ogden, a former Navy SEAL, founded the nonprofit and asked Cannon to join the expedition. The foundation has raised over $15,000 toward its goal of $50,000 to fund the expedition.
Reichenbach and Cnossen will use robotic prosthetics during the week-long climb, which is scheduled for this summer. Reichenbach told MacGinnis, “I’m proving to myself that I’m still capable of doing things that most people can’t do, even though I’m missing both legs from above my knees.”
Which just goes to show that even after injury, Navy SEALS are tougher than most of us will ever be.
MORE: These Blind Vets Train to Climb North America’s Highest Mountain
Tag: africa
This Tiny Sticker Could Save Thousands of Lives
For millions of people around the world, mosquitoes aren’t just a summertime nuisance. They’re disease-carrying killers. Researchers from the University of California-Riverside have developed a breakthrough that could forever change mosquito protection — and prevent hundreds of thousands of deaths each year. The Kite Patch is a simple sticker that attaches to clothing and makes wearers virtually “invisible” to mosquitoes for up to 48 hours. The patch works by emitting chemicals that prevent mosquitoes from sensing the carbon dioxide humans exhale, which is how the insects commonly track us, but doesn’t include dangerous toxins that are used in traditional repellants.
Malaria, Dengue Fever and West Nile Virus are just a few of the diseases that mosquitoes share with their human hosts — all of which can be deadly, especially in the developing world, where access to life-saving medications is scarce. According to the World Health Organization, 219 million cases of malaria were contracted from mosquito bites worldwide in 2010, resulting in more than 660,000 deaths, mostly in Africa. Mosquito nets, toxic lotions and sprays, and anti-malaria medications may help, but they simply don’t do enough to protect people from bites.
The Kite Patch, which was created in partnership with ieCrowd, holds incredible promise. The product’s developers raised more than $500,000 during its Indiegogo campaign, and are now moving into the implementation phase. The Kite Patch will be available in the U.S. after it receives approval from the Environmental Protection Agency. But more importantly, researchers are now preparing for a large-scale field test in Uganda — one of the product’s key “battlegrounds”, where malaria rates top 60% —promising to bring more than 1 million hours of Kite Patch protection to the families who need it most.
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MORE: A Nickel-Sized Device Could Soon Save Your Life
Why You Should Care About a Crop You’ve Never Heard Of
When it comes to food, variety is as important on farms as it is on dinner tables. Growing different types of food together preserves soil health and helps crops grow. But with biodiversity declining and about a third of the world’s plant diversity on pace to disappear by 2050, groups like FoodTank are working to make sure that a wider variety of plants go into the ground. Enset, a lesser-known crop related to bananas, is one such candidate for biodiversity, packing a nutritional punch while also proving valuable for clothing, shelter and medicine in Ethiopia and Eritrea. Harvests in the U.S. and elsewhere could help reduce global hunger and improve farming.