By Cheryl Pellerin

On World Tuberculosis Day, March 24, the United States released a five-year strategy for dealing with the ancient and relentless contagious lung disease that sickens 9 million people a year and kills nearly 5,000 every day in some of the world's poorest nations.

The strategy, called for by the 2008 Lantos-Hyde Leadership Act Against AIDS, TB and Malaria, details the government's plans from 2009 to 2014 to address the global public health threat of TB, including multidrug-resistant TB (MDR-TB) and extensively drug-resistant TB (XDR-TB), forms of the disease that threaten to undermine recent progress in controlling TB.

Peter Kimbowa lies whimpering on his back at Mulago Casualty Spine Ward section. He is one of those who got injured in last year's accident at Bulyantete along Kampala-Jinja road in which 25 people perished.

At the time of this accident, Kimbowa was a second year private student at Makerere University studying for Bachelor of Commerce degree. Since then, he has been grounded for one and half years, reeling in excruciating pain with the lower part of his body paralyzed.

Like Kimbowa, there are scores of people who have had their lives destroyed and dreams shuttered due to accidents.

Aggressive and persuasive advertising can make you buy something you would never have bought in normal circumstances.

Such may be the case these days considering how some people have been persuaded to think that there is a novel way of treating nearly every disease called reflexology.

Multitudes of reflexology clinics have mushroomed in many corners of our fair city of Kampala and its suburbs and most of them promises heaven on earth.