Analyze

As a researcher, I’m interested in the political, ecological, and cultural debates around mosquito-borne diseases and the solutions proposed to mitigate them.

When we received the task, my first impulse was to investigate about the contemporary effects of anthropogenic climate change in mosquito-borne diseases in New Orleans. But I was afraid to make the same mistake that I did in my PhD research. I wrote my PhD proposal while based in the US, more specifically in New England, during the Zika epidemic, and proposed to understand how scientists were studying ecological climate change and mosquitoes in Brazil. However, once I arrived in the country the political climate was a much more pressing issue, with the dismantling of health and scientific institutions.

Thus, after our meeting yesterday, and Jason Ludwig’s reminder that the theme of our Field Campus is the plantation, I decided to focus on how it related to mosquitoes in New Orleans.

The Aedes aegypti mosquito and the yellow fever virus it can transmit are imbricated in the violent histories of settler-colonialism and slavery that define the plantation economy. The mosquito and the virus arrived in the Americas in the same ships that brought enslaved peoples from Africa. The city of New Orleans had its first yellow fever epidemic in 1796, with frequent epidemics happening between 1817 and 1905. What caused New Orleans to be the “City of the Dead,” as Kristin Gupta has indicated, was yellow fever. However, as historian Urmi Engineer Willoughby points out, the slave trade cannot explain alone the spread and persistance of the disease in the region: "Alterations to the landscape, combined with demographic changes resulting from the rise of sugar production, slavery, and urban growth all contributed to the region’s development as a yellow fever zone." For example, sugar cultivation created ideal conditions for mosquito proliferation because of the extensive landscape alteration and ecological instabilities, including heavy deforestation and the construction of drainage ditches and canals.

Historian Kathryn Olivarius examines how for whites "acclimatization" to the disease played a role in hierarchies with “acclimated” (immune) people at the top and a great mass of “unacclimated” (non-immune) people and how for black enslaved people "who were embodied capital, immunity enhanced the value and safety of that capital for their white owners, strengthening the set of racialized assumptions about the black body bolstering racial slavery."

As I continue to think through these topics, I wonder how both the historical materialities of the plantation and the contemporary anthropogenic changes might be influencing mosquito-borne diseases in New Orleans nowadays? And more, how the regions’ histories of race and class might still be shaping the effects of these diseases and how debates about them are framed?

The convention can be applying to a State that is possibly involving in nuclear activities or might  have any nuclear effects to the surroundings. Or the state that can notify the accidents that in  the other states.   Due to 22 September 2014, there are 119 parties (states) subject to entry into force with 69  states signed the convention (Convention – Latest Status). 

I did an initial google search of “international emergency response team” and found an article from IAEA about the establishment of RANET. This network was made operational by Finland, Mexico, Sri Lanka, and the US in 2008. I found this interesting as, aside from the US, none of these countries were what I thought of in terms of nuclear energy production. Upon further research, I learned that Mexico has two reactors supporting 4% of their electricity and Finland has four reactors providing 30% of the total electricity. At the time of the article, Sri Lanka had no future in nuclear power, but in 2015 signed a deal with India to jointly create a new power plant. 

The translation for the system is managed by Transifex (not Ushahidi owned) with monthly plans for localised translation. In the case that the user not comfortable with English might be an issue to work with the system. Especially the reporters from the hard-reach areas with fewer educations. (They might deal with the problem of using technologies.)   

This study examined the risk of acquiring Ebola Virus Disease (EVD) by healthcare workers in the setting of general hospitals and isolation units. By looking retrospectively at the Ebola Outbreak in Sierra Leone, the relative levels of risk to healthcare workers were computed and compared. The reasoning for these levels was also examined through interviews of surviving workers and the families/associates/colleagues of the deceased workers. The interviews reviewed common actions (and lack there of) for affected workers. This revealed certain themes that should be visited when reveising/creating hospital infection prevention and control policies.

The bridge is developed by a team led by Dr. Ichiro Ario from Hiroshima University (Institute of Engineering), Japan.

This policy applies to "individuals directly impacted by the terrorist attack in New York City on September 11, 2001" The policy further specifies emergency responders, recovery workers, cleanup workers, residents, building occupants, and area workers in NYC.,

Funded by Federal Government. e.g.

“ETA (Employment and Training Administration) invested approximately $13 million to turn Job Corps into a program where students gain industry-recognized credentials to meet the demands of the 21st century employer.” (Educational Program) [https://www.dol.gov/sites/default/files/documents/agencies/osec/stratpl…]

The film looks at the work of MSF as an immediate relief effort, without too much in terms of long term sustainability. The doctors discuss this and how they can leave the clinic with some form of ongoing care, but that the infrastructure of the country itself does not support long term medical facilities. They look at it as an immediate fix to a forever existing problem. MSF is only there to help while they are there.

Emergency responders are the MSF members in this film, they have to continue serve millions of patients with the lack of medical supplies and the worse medical conditions over the place. They have to deal with the communication difficulties and the uncooperative patients with the lack of understanding to their own health. Furthermore, they have to make decision of which patient gets help and serve. As they concluded in the film with one of the discussion they had, there is no ideal environment (situation) to plan and perform an ideal operation (surgery) in such places (~49:00 – 51:00).