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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?

In this article, the main agencies been depicted are the local publics and the health centers. From the reports, Guinea medical centers and aid works are the main targets that received violence acts and harassments from the general publics. Whereas the publics have the perception that aid workers such as doctors and nurses are the transporters of the virus within the local communities.  

From the “At a Glance.pdf”, OSHA covers a wide range of works from private sector works (including 50 states and other US jurisdictions), states and local government workers that operate their programs to federal government workers.

But their do have some types of workers that are not eligible for the act protection such as self-employed workers, immediate family members of farm employers and workplace hazards regulated by another federal agency (e.g. Mine Safety and Health Administration). [https://www.osha.gov/Publications/all_about_OSHA.pdf]

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Funding was not mentioned in the study, but from the author’s relevant background information, personally would assume the study could found by The Miriam Hospital (The Center for Prisoner Health and Human Rights; www.prisonerhealth.org) and CFAR (nationwide Centers for AIDS Research). [https://vivo.brown.edu/display/jrichmph]

Cloud9 is built to serve as a bridge between the patients and the physicians (or similar organizations) to communicate on the issue that they are facing. This app has especially designed for improving mental healthcare for existing and unserved populations. It has engaged both parties with interactive/innovative features to profile and serve the patients. The ultimate aim for Cloud9 is to provide an affordable/approachable access to mental healthcare, along with reduce stigma surrounding mental disorders.

The policy can assist the control to water contamination, therefore improve the general public health. “The hazmat team identified the need to collect the water used to decontaminate the victims (deconwater) to avoid a release to the environment.”

The report is provided with both English and Japanese for the technical professionals to study.  For the general publics, this report summary (fact sheet) has provided in six major languages  to assist them to gained a broad understanding to the works. 

The system built organisational partnerships with world leading foundations that focusing on advancing human rights, citizen engagement, international development etc. These organisations included CISCO, google.org, USAID etc.

The development funding is not mentioned in the article or from the university sites. Therefore, personally will assume that the funding is raised by the university and relevant engineering associations.