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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?

The article referenced historical events of health epidemics in preparing for the future. The lack of current data indicates an improvement in health security or a lack of research for this publication. The extensive quotes in this article show the knowledge and credibility of the article in how securing global health has many aspects.

The tools used to produce the data in this research article was direct accounts from those who have experienced violence in delievering health services, outside brainstorming from a research panal to discover how/why violence has occured or why it was not reported. Also interpretation from data that was put out by the WHO, MSF or other health organizations.

Emergency response is not mentioned in the article, it is briefly mentioned on how each of the disasters were handled, however the article mainly focuses on the aftermath. What had caused these disasters? And what could have been done in the future to prevent them?

The main argument of the article is legalizing dieased undocumented immigrants the way this should be accomplished and the history of the issue, specifically in France from the past to the present.

8. Three points I looked up to further my understanding was formaldehyde and trailer homes, the effect of flooding on modern societies, the US preparation for future hurricanes in Louisiana.

The functions are technically supported through operational analytics- chemical data points that allow more guidelines and recovery plans to be built, a secure infrastructure that allows easy and secure transfers of information for health records and payments, coordination of care between healthcare providers at a touch of a button.

The aim of the program is to provide training and education in order to build and sustain nuclear programs as well as to respond to disaster. The prgoram offers hands on workshops in a variety of scopes. This is accomplished through the IEC the emergency and incident centre that provides programs for anyone who could be exposed to radition- medical personel, first responders, radiological assessors, etc.

This argument is supported through discussion of Soviet Russia and how Chernobyl was handled and the legislation that came after the disaster to prevent/treat further meltdowns. Through discussion of Fukishima and how no one knew what to do (the US, Russia or Japan) despite that people in all these countries have experienced nuclear disasters in the past. The discrepancy of international discussions of safety, security and education, but lack of preparation if something would happen. Discussion of doing this internationally has been talked about, but no steps have been made to accomplish this goal.