Eddigrant Peprah is your typical 15-year old boy - his ideal day is spent bike riding, playing video games, and watching TV. But these simple activities are becoming increasingly difficult. The TV screen comes in and out of focus, sometimes he misses the buttons on the game controller, and the doctors say he should no longer ride his bike down Accra’s winding dirt roads. Sometimes, he thinks he is going mad – there is a throbbing pain inside his head that will not go away.

Edigrant has squamous cell carcinoma, the second most frequent type of skin cancer. The cancer has eaten away at his right eye, leaving only an exposed hole in the place of vision. The cancer is aggressive, but treatable – Edigrant needs multi-faceted treatment, including surgery to remove the cancer.

But Edigrant’s treatment options are complicated by another disease that is just as deadly: HIV.

Born in Abijan, Coite d’ Ivoire, Edigrant moved to Ghana with his mother when he was 3. She died shortly thereafter of AIDS. Edigrant has never met his father, and was raised instead by his grandmother and uncle in Accra. He doesn’t remember too much about his mother, just that she worked at nights, so Edigrant stayed at friends’ houses until she came home in the morning.

It was over a year ago that Edigrant began experiencing pains on the right side of his head, and that the cancer began manifesting itself physically. His family took him to Korle-Bu Teaching Hospital, where doctors performed a biopsy and diagnosed him with skin cancer. It was also at Korle-Bu that Edigrant learned he was HIV-positive.

Edigrant went through several stages of radiation, but was unable to complete the therapy because it was too expensive. As a result, the cancer has entered a more aggressive stage, making the need for treatment all the more urgent. Edigrant will live, but only if the cancer is stopped immediately – it not, it will continue to spread across his face. Already, Edigrant’s left eye is growing weaker.

And you can smell Edigrant’s wound, the exposed flesh and facial tissues, the small sore on his cheek. The other day, a tro-tro driver refused to let Edmund board the bus because he said the smell of the cancer would disturb the other passengers.

Edigrant wants to study law, medicine or science. But he recently had to drop out of school because he could no longer write. Each day is a battle – against disease, against discrimination, against depression. Survival for Edigrant depends on strangers – people willing to fund his treatment. He’s only 15, but Edigrant has already learned to exist in a space of uncertainty, a space where life and death exist not as remote abstractions, but as tanglible possibilities.

After a long and painful but very brave battle, Edigrant died in June 2005.  Please help us in our fight against HIV, so that we can save other children from suffering the way Edigrant suffered.

To make a donation to support children like Edigrant, contact Dr. Naa Ashiley Vanderpuye at the West Africa AIDS Foundation at +233 (021) 761214.

Or mail your donation to:

WAAF Orphanage Trust Fund
P. O. Box KD 130
Kanda, Accra
Ghana

Account Number: 021010221037
Account Name: WAAF Orphanage Trust Fund