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Patrick Mayne
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Patrick commented on the article |Atlanta also has CARE and the Carter Center, as well as a lot of refugee resettlement orgs. Still, I've found it's preferable to be in DC.
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Patrick commented on the article |Though maybe if you take enough distilled water, that might be good for diarrhea? Well, that and some sugars/salts...
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Patrick commented on the article |OK, so I feel a little less bad at accidentally accusing India of panicking--recent article in the the Telegraph (Kolkata). http://www.telegraphindia.com/1090817/jsp/frontpage/story_11369022.jsp
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Patrick commented on the article |
oh, I did--poor self-editing. Sorry, I probably shouldn't have said that. Thanks for changing the title though!
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Patrick commented on the article |
::groan:: at the title. I really meant that everyone seems nervous, but has a very clear idea of what steps need to be taken to address potentially serious acute febrile respiratory illnesses. Panic is not a word that I've heard batted around.
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Patrick commented on the article |Oh, also, I think the closure was mandated by the Maharashtra state government, rather than the national govt, FWIW. I can't see much that New Delhi (rather than state, district, taluka and municipal governments) has done that's been entirely useful.
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Patrick commented on the article |
Pune, the city I used to work in (about 4 hours from Mumbai by car, and the size of Atlanta, though generally fairly unknown), has the highest incidence (rate?) of death from A(H1N1) in the country. It (pretty much the entire city--theaters, schools, whatever) has been closed for the last few days, and is apparently going to stay closed for the next week. People I've talked to aren't going out.
I think everyone's just shocked by how quickly this happened there. They went from 0 deaths just over a week ago to now something like 10 (a, uh, infinity-fold increase?). I think Mumbai is shocked by what's happening, and is extremely well reported, just a few hours away. Most people I knew from either city went back and forth pretty frequently for family and/or work, and a lot of people even commute daily (though I think that's completely insane). Pune seems to be in full-scale panic mode (though the government seems to be handling this remarkably well in terms of providing orderly and sane access to testing and treatment), and I can't imagine that that hasn't made people in Mumbai flip out.
The AP today reported the releases of a couple of bollywood movies are being delayed in these markets (as well as Navi Mumbai, which is the New Jersey to Mumbai's New York, and Thane, which I guess would be Connecticut in this analogy?), but honestly, unless they've shut down all markets, all public transportation (even the informal kind) and somehow solved the issue of overcrowding overnight, this really isn't going to make any difference, unfortunately. At least they seem to be doing the right thing with testing, treatment and education (which is the best anyone can do, right?).
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Patrick commented on the article |Great picture.
This post reminds me of something I wrote a while ago, on my rarely-traversed blog (http://postscripted.blogspot.com/2009/01/what-happens-when-you-cant-get-your.html). Anyways, basically reminds me that "access" as a rubric for discussing the need for and impact of public health interventions is nice because it's super cut-and-dry, but when you (er, I) accidentally shift that to the center of your philosophical raison d'etre, it tends to confuse you about who you should be helping and how.
Can file this in "more incoherent ramblings about philosophy and global health work".
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Patrick commented on the article |There are sporadic cases of it in the US southwest, but it's really nasty especially in rural areas of the Andes, under i think 2500m.
Other fun facts:
-you get chagas when the bug poops on you and you rub it into the bite wound
-there are only two drugs that treat it (or, at least that are at all available in the rural areas of bolivia i knew), and both have nasty side effects (like, can kill you), and apparently are much worse and less effective for people over the age of 15. this is why we need drug research for orphan diseases, and not just the big sexy ones!
-it's particularly severe (and acute, rather than chronic) when you accidentally directly ingest the parasite, which happens sporadically in lowland south america, when the vinchuca (the vector) is accidentally crushed up in sugar cane juice.
chagas is kinda the opposite of fun times! if there are any pharmaceutical researchers out there, please help!
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Patrick commented on the article |Lots of arrows and circles--usually by talking in circles (no, really). I worry that it's too Marxist, or Foucaldian, or generally too philosophical, or something, to always be put into practice, but because most things that I usually like talking about (public health being a big one), I try to keep in mind that while the relationship between the parties is a symptom of power relations, the intelligibility (us perceiving and/or defining something as we perceive and/or define it) of the parties is also a product of the same power.
Without going so far as to say that power creates individuals, corporations, communities, poverty, health, etc., it does certainly define for us what each of those means, and in applying those already limited definitions, we limit our perception of people to that which we define them as--that's why it's so hard for us development types to get away from seeing the people we work with as anything but poor and needy of our help, and why real community-run projects are so difficult for us to envision, let alone set up.
OK, that comment got too long, sorry, that's what I get for going through my 'recommended reading' list before bedtime.
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