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COMMUNITY
GILBERT SUN NEWS | OCTOBER 17, 2021
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Gilbert teen addresses global health experts BY KEN SAIN GSN Staff Writer
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rizona College Prep senior Sohani Sandhu has a plan to end the COVID-19 pandemic: learn the lessons from one of her least favorite subjects – history. The Gilbert resident over summer presented her plan as part of the Global Health Leaders Conference at Johns Hopkins University, one of the top medical schools in the world. Her topic was what lessons learned from the smallpox pandemic can be applied to ending the COVID threat. “This was one off the deadliest pandemics that ever happened, but it was still stopped,” Sohani said. “It took a long time, but it was still stopped because people came together and stopped it.” The Centers for Disease Control says there is evidence smallpox existed as far
Gilbert resident Sohani Sandu, a senior at ASrizona College Prep, participated in a global health conference. (Special to GSN) back as when Egypt was making mummies some 3,000 years ago, killing three of every 10 people who got the disease.
A vaccine was developed in 1796 but it wasn’t until 1959 that the World Health Organization began a plan to eradicate smallpox. With mass vaccinations across the world, they succeeded. A declaration went out in May 1980 that the disease was no more. It did, however, kill between 300 and 500 million people in the 20th century alone. Sohani said the lesson from that pandemic is that vaccines work. The W.H.O. made it a priority to vaccinate everyone who came into contact with an infected person. Doing the same for COVID-19 will not be as easy. First, when you got smallpox you knew it because the symptoms were obvious, Sohani said. That’s not the case for COVID and many people who are asymptomatic are unknowingly spreading the virus. “The huge reason smallpox was eradi-
cated was the vaccine,” Sohani said. If COVID is to join smallpox on the list of eradicated diseases, Sohani said everyone must get vaccinated. Sohani found out about the Global Health Leaders Conference at her school and applied to participate. She said she wasn’t sure if she would be chosen because it was open to high school students around the world and there were only 300 spots. Once she was chosen, she applied to be one of the few chosen to give a presentation. There were fewer than 50 presentations planned. Getting to that point took finding something to love about something she hated. Sohani said she was assigned a mandatory history project in the sixth grade. “I hate history,” she said. Her teacher suggested she focus on
see PANDEMIC page 11
Gilbert woman seeks help battling cancer BY ALEX GALLAGHER GSN Staff Writer
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t is hard for Menith Sonhthipanya-Gonzales to remember what her life was like before her diagnosis of simultaneous primary tumors. The Gilbert woman’s life was a constant whirlwind of traveling around the country as a medical vendor and evaluating hospital equipment. It was around two years ago when Sonhthipanya-Gonzalez began to feel fatigued and lethargic. So she went to a doctor and the initial diagnosis was fatigue from insufficient vitamin D. She did not think anything further and kept going on with her life. During this time, she had begun trying to have a child with her husband of
Menith Sonhthipanya-Gonzales and her husband’s life have been upended by her cancer diagnosis. (Special to GSN)
11-years, Erik. The two were not having any luck and as a result, Sonhthipanya-Gonzalez decided to try in-vitro fertilization over the summer. During the process, Sonhthipanya-Gonzalez had to adhere to a specific routine if she wanted to become pregnant. And it was not long into the process that she realized something was wrong. “When you’re doing IVF, it’s critical that everything is timed and that every injection is 12 hours apart perfectly,” she said. “For 10 days, I injected myself with medication and one day I had the most excruciating pain. It was then that I knew something was not right.” Doctors told her that she was just
see CANCER page 11
