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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?

Dr. Knowles uses various historical reports and accounts, both official and third-party, to chart the development of disaster investigation in the United States. He cites various agencies including the National Institute of Standards and Technology and the Underwriters' Laboratory or UL, LLC. 

This policy ensures that EMTs and Paramedics who transport patients to hospitals are not refused admittance or directed to other facilities due to their patients' inability to pay or other factors. While emergency departments still may declare a divert status, whereby incoming EMS units are advised that the ER is either full or unable to accept patients due to other factors, this act, and other relevant state statutes, require that hospitals still accept, treat, and stabilize any patients that are brought to their facilities.

Emergency response, specifically the recovery response in the aftermath of a disaster such as Hurricane Katrina, is the principal focus of this report.

The author argues that a patient's narrative regarding his or her medical history can vary significantly and be affected by his or her culture. Cultural norms can determine how a patient presents or describes signs and symptoms or can determine the extent to which a patient is willing to share information with medical professionals.

• "Despite the urgency and impact of violence affecting health service delivery, there is an overall lack of research that is of health-specific, publically accessible and comparable, as well as a lack of gender-disaggregated data and data on perpetrator motives."
• "Although violence directly affecting health service delivery in complex security environments has received a great deal of media attention, there is very little publically available research, particularly peer-reviewed, original research."
• "Key challenges in addressing violence affecting health service delivery in complex security environments include a lack of health-specific, accessible and comparable, gender-disaggregated data and sufficient data on perpetrator motives."

The authors present a number of current strategies that are primarily developed around an emergency modality of intervention. The strategies and protocols currently implemented by numerous organizations involve short-term interventions and responses to the immediate threat or crisis rather than the long-term socioeconomic or geopolitical factors that contribute to the emergence of such threats. The current focus lies in emergency response and humanitarian aid rather than nation building or infrastructure developments.

OSHA has set numerous occupational standards affecting almost every industry. In addition, OSHA conducts inspections to ensure compliance with safety standards. Failure to adhere to established standards could open up an organization to potential lawsuits and punitive actions. 

Emergency response, in the sense of law enforcement, fire prevention, rescue, and EMS, is not addressed. However, humanitarian and disaster response, in the face of disease and illness, is related to the topics addressed in this article.

FEMA, as a federal agency, is funded by the federal government as budgeted each year from available tax revenue.