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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 main findings presented in the article is the lack of recovery in the New Orleans after Katrina and the factors that did not cause a complete rebuild. The article discusses what happened to the poor, how the residents were treated and the lack of government funding to the city- due to the levee needing to be rebuilt. The article also discusses the mental health of those who experienced Katrina and the stress that radiated from it. The article also discusses private businesses that have thrived in lieu of those who need homes, aid and basic necessities.

It brings people/organizations to face the hiding problem and improve because seeing actual statistics and the reality of what happened makes people want to act. Facts cause people to realize what had not occured, so the improper handling of hospital/evacuations will never happen again-people lost their lives. The government will realize they need to have more personalle available, as well as supplies and to control how their personalle treat others. Katrina shaped how emergency medical care works today, as every disaster is a teaching method of what to do and not to do in the future.

1. “Studies of traumatic event experience have shown that most people who experience an event do not develop psychopathology”

“The field of disaster mental health has strong roots in research on the mental health consequences of war, specifically stemming from the experiences of WWI, WWII and the holocaust.”

“Some studies have observed increases in the use of alcohol, drugs and cigarettes after disaster and some evidence shows that disaster victims use substances, particularly alcohol as a coping strategy.”

The main findings of this article include the discrepancy of actual health issues and its surfacing in the government. The article explores post-Soviet Union Ukraine and discovers the backbone of its economy consists of disability healthcare for those affected by radiation. The struggle to survive without an illness on a  bare economy where government funds help those who may be damamged by radiation and ignore the rest of the population.

The stakeholders that are described/portrayed in the film was the fate of Japan, the nuclear disasters in th past that shaked Japan, preventing the same thing from happening. The kinds of decisions they had to grapple with before the aftermath is the powerfailure, the lack of generators, and the affect the water had on the plant, and the future of the fuel rods. During the event they had to figure out how to stop the meltdown, how to restore power to the plant, how to help the engineers who had no choice but to be stuck inside, how to save Japan from nuclear fallout,etc. The aftermath was how to get the plant up and running again, the future of nuclear power in Japan, how to clean up and prevent further contamination of the land surrounding the plant. Also the health,safety and preperation of further nuclear power plant endeavors.

The main findings in the article is that illness cannot always be black or white sometimes there is shades of gray. This is described through the way the author chose to study and publish seizure disorders in Turkey. He recorded the history of events via a narrative. This was the stories are moer beautiful and detailed. While there may be bias, the 'narratives' describe their lives, a story that can be described across a language barrier.

The authors are Paul Farmer, Bruce Nuzeye, Sara Stulac and Salmaan Keshorjee. Farmer is a doctor and medical anthrapologist and has a human rights based approach to global healthcare. Nizeye is the chief of infrastructure for PIH in Rawanda. Stulac is an associate physician in the division of global health equity. Salmaan researches global health and social medicine at Harvard. They are all collectively professionally equipted in respect to emergency response because they all are familiar with healthcare from their fields.

THe main findings/arguments in this article is what is humantiariasm in the face of sexual violence. How sexual violence became the perfect goal for human rights activists (medical outreach) to address. The article explains human rights movements in African countries and exemplifies what happens to those who live in war strewn countries; how sexual assualt and rape are crimes, specifically to women and the questino if men and those who are transgender are excluded and how to fix it.