News — Healthcare

Dr. Thakgalo Thibela is being hailed as one of South Africa’s youngest doctors, having graduated with a Bachelor of Medicine and Bachelor of Surgery from the University of Witwatersrand. According to the Health Practice Council of South Africa, Thibela is the youngest active female doctor in the country.

The 21-year-old woman is living her lifelong dream of being a doctor. She is helping to put smiles back on the faces of her patients.

“The gratitude patients have after receiving help brings me so much joy,” she was quoted by The Saturday Star. “Seeing smiles on patient’s faces after consultation or when they get discharged from the hospital is why I love this job so much. I’ve always wanted to help people and medicine has given me the platform to do just that.”

Thibela grew up in Violetbank, a rural village in Bushbuckridge, in Mpumalanga in eastern South Africa. Coming from a middle-class family, her dad is a manager at a local municipality while her mother is a primary school teacher. Her parents valued education and instilled in her the power of education at a very young age.

Having been educated through the public school system, Thibela is proud of her achievements. She has always been the youngest person in her class since high school after skipping grades. Thibela skipped grade 7 in primary school and enrolled at Lehlasedi High School where she barely spent a week in grade 9 and was promoted to grade 10.

During her high school graduation, a then 15-year-old Thibela had distinctions in seven out of eight subjects.

“I was very fortunate that the schools I went to (public schools by the way) promoted students they felt were doing well academically, so as a result I didn’t do Grade 7 and 9 and I also started school a year early which enabled me to complete matric at 15,” she told The Saturday Star.

At 16, all Thibela wanted to do was to be a doctor. Thus, during school applications, she chose medicine as her first choice. She was subsequently admitted to Wits University at the age of 16 where she enrolled for a six-year degree in the Bachelor of Medicine and Bachelor of Surgery.

Gaining admission to the university was her first time living away from her family and outside her village to the city. It was quite difficult readjusting and she had to deal with low self-esteem coupled with bullying from the city folks because of her thick village accent. She was also ridiculed by her university peers for not pronouncing certain English words the way most people pronounced them, a report by News24 said.

At a point, she felt out of place. Nonetheless, she had one goal and that was to finish medical school. She performed very well in school, earning her the Golden Key International membership, a recognition for students doing well academically. At 21, she has completed her Bachelor of Medicine and Bachelor of Surgery, making herself and her family proud.

She has been instrumental amid the COVID-19 pandemic, working on the frontline with her colleagues at Helen Joseph Hospital in Johannesburg, where she is doing her practical experiential learning.

Patients and doctors alike get fascinated by her skills and level of professionalism especially when they get to know she is 21 years old. In her second year of medical school, Thibela got intrigued by the human brain during a dissection practical and has hopes of specializing in neurosurgery sometime soon.

“The brain and nervous system have always fascinated me. If the brain stops working, whether your heart is still beating or not, you are considered dead.

“For me, the brain is the most important organ in the human body, and I would like to know more about it and help people who have a brain and nervous system lesions get better,” she said.

Thibela hopes to inspire others to chase their dreams as well, especially the young ones in her village.

The curse of Breton Woods Institutions, the United Nations Organization and the Western Powers is their irritating habit of describing poverty and economic as well as social challenges of Africa, Asia, and South (Latin) America without offering a solution.

It is evident in the history of development economics that the Western Powers and the Breton Woods organizations have always perpetrated this irritating kind of communication about the poor world without making any effort to suggest a solution that is implementable in terms of pulling Africa, Asia and Latin America out of the mire of poverty.

Any keen observer will not miss inferring that the west derives sadomasochistic joy from the stand-offish description of poverty in the third world; and indeed it is true that the West and the UN have described Africa’s poverty for a century, but so far there is no feasible or user-friendly solution suggested by the West as a way of dealing with poverty in Africa, Asia and Latin America. This observation is based on the recent UNFPA report that made an irritating statement about social problems of women in the third world by stating that, “Only half of women in developing world have body autonomy.”

The UNFPA report stated that “whether it’s sex, health care or using contraception, women in developing countries lack control over decisions affecting their bodies.” Yes, it is true. Women in Africa and other parts of the developing world lack choices over what happens with their own bodies, but does the UN have a good degree of moral authenticity to make public description of such preventable challenges that have been made unpreventable by dishonest political interactions across the world, a buck which stops at the table of the United Nations.

On April 14, 2021, UNFPA reported that half of women in 57 poor countries around the world are denied the freedom to decide on what to do with their own bodies. The report stated that women in the poor world don’t have autonomy of sex, contraception and health care. The report also stated that women in the poor world have no autonomy to prevent rape, forced sterilization, virginity tests and genital mutilation.

According to Natalia Kanem, the current head of the UNFPA’s sexual and reproductive health agency, “hundreds of millions of women and girls do not own their own bodies, their lives are governed by others, decision about their bodies are made by other people like partners, family members, society and government.” Natalia also reported that, “rape in the developing countries is not always prosecuted.”

In the report, Natalia further argued that COVID-19 pandemic has led to increasing sexual violence, more unintended pregnancies, and new barriers to health access, along with job and education losses in Africa and the developing world. Natalia’s UNFPA report also predicted that Africa and the developing world are going to experience an extra 13 million child marriages and another 2 million cases of female genital mutilation in the next decade as the pandemic stymies global efforts to end both practices.

However, Natalia’s UNFPA report praised in a glorious tone countries like Sweden, Uruguay, Cambodia, Finland and the Netherlands for achieving good level of gender equality. UNFPA praised governments of these countries for having had lead role to play by fulfilling obligations under human rights treaties, as well as altering social, political, institutional and economic structures that reinforce gender inequalities.

In a nutshell, the UNFPA report has just described, though by basing on very shaky evidence, how women in Africa and the developing world are prone to rape, FGM, early marriage, domestic violence, virginity test, forced abortion and other forms of gender-based oppression but it has not suggested any solution or institutional procedure that can be followed to prevent such kind of hostilities to the women of the poor world.

Critical outlook points out that UNFPA was also supposed to give a report on the social, economic and physical challenges of migrant women in America, Europe and other developed countries. And at the same time, UNFPA is also obliged to give us a reflexive report on the suffering of African women in countries like Congo as nothing else but the undoing of the UN and the developed world.  Maybe this article must also mention that poverty is at the center of gender based autonomy of women in Africa, yet poverty in Africa has been reinforced by unstable security. And it is also indubitable that the recurrent wars and endemic poverty in Africa are a reflex of the political behavior of the UN and the Western powers on the global stage. 

No one can doubt factual decorum in the argument that Poverty in Africa was solvable, but Western powers chose to play tricks with it. This is why China has been embraced after displaying evidence of being capable to help Africa fight poverty through improving the quality of infrastructures in Rural Africa. One good with China is that it has never wasted time describing poverty in Africa, but it has always been involved in practical warfighting poverty in Africa through building roads, hospitals, schools, dams, gabions, boreholes, irrigation infrastructures and electrical power generating infrastructures and so on. At least this will help African women to access food with dignity, a substructure on which they can base autonomy to make choices about their bodies. Otherwise, it is not easy for a woman to have autonomy of choices in relation to her body when she is operating on an empty stomach.

When Darryl Sharpton first joined the National Football League (NFL) in 2010, he was tipped as one of the promising stars to look out for. Unfortunately, injuries got in his way and he had to end his career in 2015. 

“I was miserable,” he said of his series of injuries that derailed his career in an interview. “I couldn’t take it.” He finished his career playing 47 games for the Texans recording 176 tackles and one sack. 

After quitting the NFL, Sharpton went into entrepreneurship, establishing e-commerce furniture companies Edloe Finch in 2017 and Albany Park in 2019 with his wife Jessica. He told CNBC that his companies have Amazon and Wayfair as wholesale buyers.

According to Sharpton, Albany Park is a sofa in a box brand that ships to buyers within three days. He and his wife design the furniture and have them manufactured in China and Malaysia. Edloe Flinch, on its website, says its “mission is to manufacture chic modern furniture without the typical industry mark-ups. Edloe Finch operates exclusively online with no retail stores, showrooms or salespeople — passing the savings to you!” 

Going into entrepreneurship, especially within the e-commerce space, was nothing out of the blue for Sharpton. It was a passion he had since his days at the University of Miami where he studied finance. He got an opportunity to sell furniture after purchasing a sofa from Craigslist.

After five years playing in the NFL, there is no gainsaying that the former linebacker is supervising a thriving business. He witnessed a boom in online sales occasioned by the coronavirus pandemic as many countries and states imposed lockdown measures to contain the spread of the virus.

Last year, Sharpton said his companies estimated to make $10 million in sales, up from $3.9 million in 2019. However, because of the pandemic, the revenue projection was pushed to $20 million. It could reach $100 million in 2022, he said. “With Covid-19, the online shopping trends have accelerated five years into the future,” Sharpton told CNBC. “We happen to be in a good space at a good time.”

The road has not been smooth sailing for the former NFL player. He recalled facing discrimination and racism while attending furniture fairs. He remembered taking an unusual step to use his wife’s face on the site so that his business wouldn’t suffer because he is Black. His wife is Asian and White, and a former oil and gas consultant.

“Today, I can’t imagine being in that place mentally but definitely at the time I was [unsure] if people would feel comfortable with buying furniture from me where they would maybe question everything – the quality, the validity,” Sharpton said.

The 34-year-old is looking to expand his business by accepting investors although he is torn between potential acquisition offers. 

Numerous people across the globe eat with their hands. However, as we adopt more traditions of the western world, it is common to see people using spoons and forks to eat all the time. A lot of people, though, do not know that eating with the hands has a number of surprising health benefits. As compiled by THEPRIMALIST.COM, DAILY MAIL and USNEWS.COM, discover the reasons why you should ditch cutlery today.

1) Helps prevent type 2 diabetes

A new study published in the journal Clinical Nutrition found that people with type 2 diabetes were more likely to be fast eaters that used cutlery to eat, as compared to people without the condition. Eating with forks and spoons correlates with faster eating, which has been linked to blood-sugar imbalances in the body -- contributing to the development of type 2 diabetes. If you suspect that you may be eating too quickly, ditch utensils and focus on your eating style -- consciously slow it down and see how you feel. You may be surprised by how soon you get full with less food if you eat with your hands.

2) Improved digestion

We have some bacteria, known as normal flora, found on the palm and fingers of the hand. It is not harmful to humans, it in fact protects us from many damaging microbes in the environment. When you eat with your hands, the flora in the fingers is swallowed. It is beneficial for health and for various body parts such as the mouth, throat, and intestine, and it promotes healthy digestion in the gut. Handling food with your fingers releases digestive juices and enzymes. Also, millions of nerve endings in your fingers relay the message that you’re about to eat, including the temperature of the food, level of spiciness and texture of food, thereby prepping the stomach for digestion.

3) Useful tool in preventing binge eating

Binge eating is becoming a concern with more adults, but it can also occur in childhood. Binge eating seems to be related to the vicious cycle of restrictive dieting followed by a loss of control around food, and it contributes to further health problems. A study published in the Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology showed that families who ate by hand were more in touch with eating concepts, such as eating only when hungry and paying attention to fullness cues. The study found that parents were able to help their 8 to 12-year-old overweight children cut down on binge eating episodes by training them to eat by hand.

4) It can help decrease overeating at restaurants

People worldwide spend about 40% of their food budget on dining out. These meals tend to be higher in overall calories, raising concern that this practice is increasing our national waistline. While many health professionals advise people to try and cook more at home, one study showed that watchful eating at restaurants might help. The researchers found that middle-aged women who ate out and used their hands to pick on appetizers and dry food entrées at least three times a week were heedful while eating.

This approach helped them reduce acid influx issues while still enjoying restaurant meals minus the feeling of heaviness.

5) Sure-fire way to stay lean

Researchers studied over 1,600 middle-aged women in New Zealand found that those women who ate in response to hunger were more likely to be at a healthy weight than women who paid no mind to hunger cues when they ate. Many people multi-task while eating lunch, but two studies published in the journal Appetite found that when people ate by hand while simultaneously reading a newspaper or watching TV, they were less hungry at snack-time, and opted for a smaller snack. Researchers concluded that eating by hand promotes a sense of fullness and satiety as compared to eating with utensils.

Tanzanian President John Pombe Magufuli has died at the age of 61, the country’s vice-president said. He died on Wednesday from heart complications at a hospital in Dar es Salaam, Samia Suluhu Hassan disclosed this in a televised address to the nation late on Wednesday.

The BBC reported last Wednesday that Magufuli has not made a public appearance in some time, prompting Tanzanians to ask for the whereabouts of their president. The opposition leader, Tundu Lissu, said the president was on admission in a hospital due to COVID-19. This is yet to be confirmed. Lissu said that Magufuli was flown to Kenya last Monday but rather quietly. He added that Magufuli may have suffered a cardiac arrest in his illness.

Last year, the Covid-19 skeptic leader declared a “victory” of the pandemic over what he said were the prayers of Tanzanians. Magufuli’s administration had declared that the country was coronavirus-free. This came after the government insisted normal public life would have to go on in spite of the suspected increase in cases leading up to the end of last year. Schools remained open as did churches.

“The corona disease has been eliminated thanks to God,” Magufuli once stated in a speech, apparently because of prayers. The spiritual inclination was not a joke as the government warned the American Embassy in Dar-es-Salaam to stay out of Tanzania’s internal affairs after the American envoy issued a statement in May 2020 claiming that hospitals in the commercial capital were on the verge of collapse due to admitting coronavirus-infected patients.

Magufuli did not only allege foreign conspiracies to undermine his government but also moved to crush faith in Tanzania’s scientific research community. He once stated that “probably, the technicians are also bought to mislead” on infection and mortality rates in the country. 

The head of the national research unit in charge of understanding Tanzania’s case count and kinds of infection was sacked after his outfit was accused of finding coronavirus in goats and pawpaw.

The government then launched an investigation into “criminal possibility at the national laboratory”. While most African countries placed restrictions on public life, Tanzania did not. Apart from full churches and mosques, stadia were also loaded with soccer fans and continue to be.

President John Magufuli of Tanzania, who has made global news headlines for advocating lax measures in his country in spite of the pandemic, is reportedly in a hospital receiving treatment for a coronavirus infection.

The BBC reported on Wednesday that Magufuli has not made a public appearance in some time, prompting Tanzanians to ask for the whereabouts of their president. However, according to opposition leader Tundu Lissu, the president is on admission in a hospital due to COVID-19, per his (Lissu’s) sources.

Lissu explained that information available to him has it that Magufuli, 61, was flown to Kenya on Monday night but rather quietly. He also added that Magufuli may have suffered a cardiac arrest in his illness.

Nairobi Hospital which is said to be where the Tanzanian leader has been admitted refused to comment on the allegation, the BBC said.

The 53-year-old opposition leader also alleges that Philip Mpango, the Finance Minister who made a public appearance a few weeks ago but was captured on camera coughing unstoppably, has also been admitted at Nairobi Hospital.

Understandable cover of darkness

If Magufuli is truly in a hospital having been infected by the virus, it would be understandable that his treatment is under a cover of darkness. Last year, the ultraconservative leader declared a “victory” of the pandemic because of what he said were the prayers of Tanzanians.

Magufuli’s administration had declared that the country was coronavirus-free. This came after government insisted normal public life would have to go on in spite of suspected increase in cases leading up to the end of last year. Schools remained opened as did churches, the establishments Magufuli credited with the “success” of Tanzania’s fight.

“The corona disease has been eliminated thanks to God,” Magufuli once stated in a speech, apparently because of prayers. The spiritual inclination was not a joke as the government warned the American Embassy in Dar-es-Salaam to stay out of Tanzania’s internal affairs after the American envoy issued a statement in May 2020 claiming that hospitals in the commercial capital were on the verge of collapse due to admitting coronavirus-infected patients.

Magufuli did not only allege foreign conspiracies to undermine his government but also moved to crush faith in Tanzania’s scientific research community. He once stated that “probably, the technicians are also bought to mislead” on infection and mortality rates in the country. The head of the national research unit in charge of understanding Tanzania’s case count and kinds of infection was sacked after his outfit was accused of finding coronavirus in goats and pawpaw.

The government then launched an investigation into “criminal possibility at the national laboratory”. While most African countries placed restrictions on public life, Tanzania did not. Apart from full churches and mosques, stadia were also loaded with soccer fans and continue to be.

People who draw on their own experiences to make the world a better place for others are invaluable and Dr. Oluwatomilayo (Tito) Daodu is a poster girl for such people. She had a rough childhood and as the first Black female pediatric surgeon practicing in Canada at the Alberta’s Children’s Hospital Foundation, she wants to make surgical care accessible to all.

Daodu is an award-winning researcher, volunteer, and the first Black pediatric surgeon working to “break down barriers to patients in need of surgical care.”

She believes her job is the best in the world as she does not only get to save lives but save the lifetimes of children she encounters.

As part of Black History Month, the American Pediatric Surgical Association (APSA) gave a nod to the remarkable work Daodu is doing in her field on Twitter.

According to Avenue Calgary, Daodu was born in Nigeria. After being deported from Canada, she permanently moved to the country when she was eight. Fortunately, or unfortunately, she grew up in a rough neighborhood in the inner city of Winnipeg.

Determined to be more than she sees around her, Daodu chose to make the local drop-in center for kids, Wes Broadway Youth Outreach, her second home. There she was mentored by volunteers, and to date, she credits them for changing her life.

It was then that she took a stance to do everything she could to help the less privileged in society because when they get help, they, in turn, might grow up to reciprocate that help and the entire cycle is broken for a better society.

To her, the world would be a better place when pediatric surgeons are accessible to all peoples everywhere. “When we help the worst off or those with the least access, we do a service to the entire system,” she said.

She received her medical training at the University of Manitoba and did her residency and fellowship at the University of Calgary. Her research was on the impact of socioeconomic status on surgical outcomes and access to care.

For her outstanding work to society, she was nominated as part of Avenue Magazine’s Top 40 Under 40 in October 2019. The award scheme recognizes high-achieving Calgarians who are doing their bid to effect change in society and creating a lasting impact on the future of others.

As a medical student, Daodu was part of a team that developed a project centered on adolescent gender and reproductive health in Tanzania.

There were no summer ‘holidays’ for her either because she spent her summers in her native country Nigeria researching early childhood pneumonia and later launched ‘a surgical needs assessment’ for Nigeria as well.

Currently, Daodu is pursuing a master’s in public health at the Harvard University’s T.H Chan School of Public health. At Harvard, Daodu is part of a team working to modify the safe surgery checklist for high-income countries around the world, per Avenue Calgary.

Her passion is to promote justice and equity in medicine through Global Health. She is participating in ongoing research on Global and Public Health that focuses on improving surgical outcomes and improving equal access to surgical care for Canadians and the world at large.

“One of the things that excite me about the future is that I have a story that not that many people have,” she said. “I am probably uniquely situated from what I’ve gone through in life to be able to speak not just from an academic point of view, but from real life.”

Ghana on Wednesday became the first country in the world to receive Covid-19 vaccines from Covax, an international co-operative program whose mission is to ensure that low and middle-income countries are not left behind in the distribution of coronavirus vaccines. The shipment, consisting of 600,000 doses of the AstraZeneca vaccines, arrived Wednesday morning at the Kotoka International Airport in Ghana’s capital, Accra.

The vaccines, which are part of the first wave of vaccine deliveries headed to several low and middle-income countries, were produced by the Serum Institute of India, in the Indian city of Pune, a joint statement issued by UNICEF Ghana and WHO Ghana said.

“Today marks the historic moment for which we have been planning and working so hard,” said UNICEF Executive Director Henrietta Fore. “With the first shipment of doses, we can make good on the promise of the COVAX Facility to ensure people from less wealthy countries are not left behind in the race for life-saving vaccines.”

“The next phase in the fight against this disease can begin -– the ramping up of the largest immunization campaign in history,” said Fore. “Each step on this journey brings us further along the path to recovery for the billions of children and families affected around the world.”
Ghana, with a population of 30 million, has so far recorded 81,245 cases of the coronavirus and 584 deaths. The West African country is among 92 countries that have signed onto the Covax program. Covax is led by the United Nation’s World Health Organization; Gavi, a vaccine group; and the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations, or CEPI. Covax is funded by donations from governments, foundations and multilateral institutions. Its aim, according to a report by CNN, “is to buy coronavirus vaccines in bulk and send them to poorer nations that can’t compete with wealthy countries in securing contracts with the major drug companies.”
In February, Covax said it had secured almost 2.3 billion doses for distribution this year. Out of that figure, 1.8 billion is expected to be made available to 92 of the world’s poorest countries, the majority of which will be free. Countries that have signed to the program have to submit a detailed plan for handling and distributing the shot. Charles Adu Boahen, Ghana’s deputy finance minister, said Accra was first because the WHO had given the nod to its rollout plan. That rollout plan was led by former WHO deputy director-general Dr Anarfi Asamoa-Baah.
“[He] was in charge of vaccines for three years at the global health body and . . . was instrumental in putting together the rollout plan in a timely manner, allowing Ghana to be approved ahead of other African countries,” Boahen said, according to the Financial Times.
Ghana’s vaccination campaign will start March 2 and will be conducted in phases, beginning with health workers, adults of 60 years and over, people with underlying health conditions, frontline executive, legislature, judiciary, and their related staff, Ghana’s acting Minister of Information Kojo Oppong Nkrumah said in a statement.

“The government of Ghana remains resolute at ensuring the welfare of all Ghanaians and is making frantic efforts to acquire adequate vaccines to cover the entire population through bilateral and multi-lateral agencies,” he said.

People who draw on their own experiences to make the world a better place for others are invaluable and Dr. Oluwatomilayo (Tito) Daodu is a poster girl for such people. She had a rough childhood and as the first Black female pediatric surgeon practicing in Canada at the Alberta’s Children’s Hospital Foundation, she wants to make surgical care accessible to all.

Daodu is an award-winning researcher, volunteer, and the first Black pediatric surgeon working to “break down barriers to patients in need of surgical care.”

She believes her job is the best in the world as she does not only get to save lives but save the lifetimes of children she encounters.

As part of Black History Month, the American Pediatric Surgical Association (APSA) gave a nod to the remarkable work Daodu is doing in her field on Twitter.

According to Avenue Calgary, Daodu was born in Nigeria. After being deported from Canada, she permanently moved to the country when she was eight. Fortunately, or unfortunately, she grew up in a rough neighborhood in the inner city of Winnipeg.

Determined to be more than she sees around her, Daodu chose to make the local drop-in center for kids, Wes Broadway Youth Outreach, her second home. There she was mentored by volunteers, and to date, she credits them for changing her life.

It was then that she took a stance to do everything she could to help the less privileged in society because when they get help, they, in turn, might grow up to reciprocate that help and the entire cycle is broken for a better society.

To her, the world would be a better place when pediatric surgeons are accessible to all peoples everywhere. “When we help the worst off or those with the least access, we do a service to the entire system,” she said.

She received her medical training at the University of Manitoba and did her residency and fellowship at the University of Calgary. Her research was on the impact of socioeconomic status on surgical outcomes and access to care.

For her outstanding work to society, she was nominated as part of Avenue Magazine’s Top 40 Under 40 in October 2019. The award scheme recognizes high-achieving Calgarians who are doing their bid to effect change in society and creating a lasting impact on the future of others.

As a medical student, Daodu was part of a team that developed a project centered on adolescent gender and reproductive health in Tanzania.

There were no summer ‘holidays’ for her either because she spent her summers in her native country Nigeria researching early childhood pneumonia and later launched ‘a surgical needs assessment’ for Nigeria as well.

Currently, Daodu is pursuing a master’s in public health at the Harvard University’s T.H Chan School of Public health. At Harvard, Daodu is part of a team working to modify the safe surgery checklist for high-income countries around the world, per Avenue Calgary.

Her passion is to promote justice and equity in medicine through Global Health. She is participating in ongoing research on Global and Public Health that focuses on improving surgical outcomes and improving equal access to surgical care for Canadians and the world at large.

“One of the things that excite me about the future is that I have a story that not that many people have,” she said. “I am probably uniquely situated from what I’ve gone through in life to be able to speak not just from an academic point of view, but from real life.”

A 17-year-old high school senior hopes her science experiment will be instrumental in saving lives in developing countries. Dasia Taylor has developed a color-changing suture that will make it easy to detect infections.

The sutures will change color if the PH level of the patient alters, making the detection of infections faster and easier and that was the most important aspect of her research. When the PH level alters, it indicates the presence of an infection which leads to its early detection.

Ultimately, it will make the early detection of infections in developing countries a lot easier, so they are quickly treated with antibiotics to cut down the costs of expensive treatments.

Taylor did not start by wanting to experiment with sutures in a lab growing up. She nursed the dream of being a surgeon, but a suture gift one Christmas sparked her curiosity in STEM, and she went for it.

“Even if you don’t know what you’re doing, just go with it,” Taylor told reporters. “I stand by the idea that I stumbled into STEM by way of intellectual curiosity. Be curious, because that will afford you so many opportunities.”

The Iowa City West High School senior is now a Regeneron Science Talent Scholar for her research work on the color-changing sutures.

She took up the task outside normal school hours with the help of her science teachers. After a year of intensive research, she entered her work into the 80th annual Regeneron Science Talent Search.

Taylor was named a part of the top 300 scholars out of the 1,760 students who made submissions. Her research primarily focused on the suitable material for the stitches and learning how to work in a sterile environment to test bacteria as well as how to wear gloves properly.

Her high school was kind enough to give her bacteria from its labs for the research. “I wanted to conduct research. I didn’t think I was going to get this far,” Dasia recalled. “This was really a chance for me to branch out and use my creativity.

“I love my project, and to find out that it was working and to get the results I did, I was over the moon.”

The first time the public saw her experiment was in March 2020 at the Junior Science and Humanities Symposium. Most Black people stay away from STEM and for a Black girl walking into the competition with her afro, Taylor stood out from the crowd.

That notwithstanding, she had worked on her studies for a year and had done a lot of trial and errors so she walked into that competition full of confidence and she won with her head held high.

“Being in the room knowing stereotypes were flying and to be able to prove them wrong and win first place was phenomenal. My mom and I talk about it all the time. I often find myself in white-dominated spaces. That’s definitely one for the books,” Taylor told the Gazette. 

The young researcher could be named one of the 40 finalists to receive $25,000 as a Regeneron Science Talent Scholar and participate in the final competition in March 2021 for the grand prize of $250,000.

Still unsure of what college she will attend after high school, Taylor wants to major in political science and wants to be a lawyer. In the last four years, she has been dedicated to equity and restorative justice in her community.

“I’m a firm believer (that) you don’t have to be confined to a box and just stay in one subject area. You can bounce around. If you’re interested in it, go for it,” Taylor said.