I’ve met a few courageous people in my life. People who have striven to do well, despite physical disabilities and illness. People of such courage and determination that they humbled me. Up to now, these courageous people have been men. Then I met one of the most courageous women I’ve ever met in my life. That women is Anna Dukic, a business woman from Bari on the south of Italy who is pursuing her day dream.
Around ten years ago, Anna Dukic who suffers from chronic osterporois was confined to bed. Her doctors thought she would be dead within a year. That was more than ten years ago. I met Anna last weekend and I can assure you she is very much alive. Tecnhically Anna should be in a wheelchair, but she is not.
Despite excruciating levels of pain which she admits, reduce her to tears, she forges ahead. She is a woman on a mission to save lives – and, in the nature of a true heroine, or hero, she ignores her pain and marches on. What a woman, what a person. She is the embodiment of inspiration. I really don’t know how she manages it.
Yet Anna Dukic approaches life with a smile on her face. She could give up, retire to bed and slowly fade away – but she does not. No. She keeps on going. Day in day out – chasing her day dream.
Way back in 2001, when Anna was lying on her back suffering great distress, her daughter told Anna about the internet and email. Anna sent an email – I don’t really know how, or whether she published it accidentyally, but she received hundreds of replies. One of which came from her business partner and the inventor of the device Anna Dukic’s Dukic Day Dream company created.
This device, an anonymous looking cylinder, is capable of reducing the noxious emissions of diesel engines by between 35 and 50%. It also makes diesel engines more efficient and does not cost a fortune either. This anonymous looking device can save lives. Ever heard of nano-particles? Well, either had I, but these tiny particles can affect out DNA. Scientific research has shown that nano-particles – PM2.5 – are much more dangerous than the oft cited PM10 levels which cities around Europe are striving to reduce, and they can alter DNA.
But Anna’s company is unable to obtain official approval for her device – which is not, in case you were wondering, a filter. It’s better than a filter – much better than the anti-particulate filters being pushed by an industry group which was formerly headed by one Marco Tronchetti Provera – the CEO of Italian tyre giant – Pirelli.
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All the anti-particulate filters do is to stop noxious emissions getting into the atmosphere by capturing toxic particles. The problem, as Anna Dukic and her staff explained to me, is that these filters become bunged up. Even worse, after becoming blocked, they can stop engines from working. Just ask an ambulance crew whose new ambulance which was fitted with an anti-particulate filter broke down while it was answering an emergency call. The NGO which operates the ambulance has decided to install one of Anna Dukic’s devices so it can get on with the job of saving lives without having to worry about the reliability of its ambulances.
The anti-particulate filter which caused the ambulance to break down, was most probably, Anna Dukic and …. told me, a model which was made by Pirelli.
In another incident, a mining company in Italy whose excavation and earthmoving equipment was fitted with Pirelli anti-particulate filters had problems with its employees vomiting on the job. To make the Pirelli anti-particulate filters function, they require an extra chemical additive – and it was the additive which, in the confined space of a mine, was causing workmen to be physically sick.
The mining company in question fitted Dukic’s devices to all of its diesel powered equipment and the problem went away. Not only that, but the company was saving money on diesel fuel owing to the efficiency of Dukic’s anonymous looking cylinders.
