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Just by wearing shoes, several diseases, including podoconiosis, can easily be prevented.

By: Jeffery Holter

Diseases are gross, disgusting and unpleasant. They can also be deadly at worst, or make it impossible to live a normal life at best. It might seem surprising, but something you can catch on your feet can cause an infection and make your life miserable.
Without shoes, there is more to worry about besides feet getting cut up and infected. You could get a major foot disease. And millions of people don't live normal lives because they contracted one.
Podoconiosis is one of these diseases. Podoconiosis is?a soil-transmitted disease caused by contact between feet and silica-rich soil, and is easily preventable by simply wearing shoes. When someone has it, it looks a bit like elephantiasis - the foot is extremely swollen and enlarged, and can extend all the way to the calf. Long-term care for this disease is difficult to give, and requires the patient, the patient's family and the doctors to all cooperate.
If a person walks barefoot over silica-rich soil, absorbs silica particles and contracts podoconiosis, the disease can progress in stages. It causes a person's lymphatics to fibrose and obstruct, and the femoral nodes to enlarge. This makes the legs and feet swell, and then they they might feel like 'water bags', 'rubbery' and 'wooden'. Finally, the leg becomes hyperkeratotic and nodular. Lymph may ooze through his skin, which may be secondarily infected by fungi or bacteria. The disease may progress steadily, or there may be a succession of acute episodes which resolve incompletely.
Various companies and non-profits are trying to help fund hospitals for treatment for the disease and provide shoes to villagers, such as Mossy Foot, a non-profit based in Ventura, California, and TOMS Shoes, an LA-based shoe company.
Mossy Foot Project was founded in 1999 to help prevent podoconiosis in Ethiopia. Another name for the disease is "mossy foot." With donations, the Mossy Foot project provides clinics, supplies, special shoes and foot treatment is the only one of its kind in Ethiopia. Money is collected from patients if they are able to pay, but this accounts for only 1 percent of total expenses. The other 99 percent is met by donations.
Anyone can donate to the Mossy Foot Project, and there is even a guide that says what each donation will give patients in the non-profit's clinics. Ten dollars gives two pairs of shoes and socks for a child - enough for one year's protection from getting Mossy Foot; $20 provides a pair of custom made shoes for a patient with Mossy Foot who has enlarged feet; $50 donation provides treatment supplies for a Mossy Foot patient for a year; $100 donation goes toward the purchase of another vehicle, allowing us to open six new clinics treating a whole new population of Mossy Foot patients; $150 provides vocational training and tools for a Mossy Foot patient so they can become independent; $200 goes to pay for surgical treatment of a patient with an extreme case of? Mossy Foot; and $500 or more donation toward the building of a new Research Center to investigate treatments and prevention of Mossy Foot.
Blake Mycoskie, founder of TOMS Shoes, is passionate about preventing the disease, as well. He has met several people who have been affected by the disease, and talked about a woman he met in Ethiopia who had Podoconiosis in an interview with Rugby Ralph Lauren.
"Her feet were the size of elephant's feet, and she was ostracized from her community. She was so depressed that she was considering suicide. After she went through treatment for the disease, she started wearing shoes and got involved in a vocational training program, learning hairdressing. When she went back to her village, she started a hairdressing business and made so much money from it that she was able to buy a donkey, which she rents out. Last year she fell in love and got married?all because she sought treatment and began wearing shoes."
This disease is so preventable, it's sad that millions are infected each year - all because they don't have a pair of shoes. It's easy to help, so help - help prevent "mossy foot" by finding out how you can donate non-profits and organizations working to prevent more people from being infected.

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Article Source: http://www.webcitymarketing.com/articles

Jeffery Holter is a professional freelance writer based out of Los Angeles, California. If you would like to know more about TOMS Botas, please visit TOMSshoes.com.

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