I was most interested by how hard the doctors worked beyond the medical stuff to care for the patients. Whether it is making sure they have somewhere warm to be discharged to or keeping them long enough that they can get the medicaltions they need, they really do more than medicine.
Paul E Farmer, Bruce Nizeye, Sara Stulac, Salmaan Keshavjee are listed as the authors of this paper. They work with the health workers in suffering countries, like Haiti. Farmer is a co-founder of Partners in Health, as well as a physician and anthropologist. Stulac is an MD, MPH, specializing in pediatrics, and is also associated with PIH. Keshavjee is an MD, PhD, professor at Harvard of Global Health and Social Medicine. They are all professionals in the field of medicine, and through the PIH, they are well acquainted with responding to global health issues.
"... Haiti is a long, long way from realizing the bullish goal of 'building back better.'''
"... hope for eradication [of cholera] rests on ... the U.N. to come up with the money."
" At just the moment when it seemed that infectious disease was about to be conquered, and that the critical health problems of the industrialized world now involved chronic disease and diseases of lifestyle, experts warned, we were witnessing a “return of the microbe.”"
" The aim of such techniques is not to manage known disease but to address vulnerabilities in health infrastructure by, for example, strengthening hospital surge capacity, stockpiling drugs, exercising response protocols, and vaccinating first responders. Approaches based on preparedness may not be guided by rigorous cost-benefit analysis. Rather, they are aimed at developing the capability to respond to various types of potentially catastrophic biological events."
"Security — the freedom from fear or risk — always suggests an absolute demand; security has, as Foucault wrote, no principle of limitation. There is no such thing as being “too secure.”51 Living with risk, by contrast, acknowledges a more complex calculus. It requires new forms of political and ethical reasoning that take into account questions that are often only implicit in discussions of biosecurity interventions."
Students, professors, and others in academia appear to use the the site to blog about their experiences in Japan as it relates to diasters.
The first hand interviews from first responders are compiled in a way that goes through the stories of what heppened, how health information was released and changed. The first repsonder stories are intermixed with testimonies from the EPA workers, showing differences in the science that was found and the press releases disclosing the health concerns. Many tear up upon realizing how their health will hurt their families. The doctors in the area caught onto the trends in poor health and started a monitoring program to make sure everyone got the medical screening and help they needed. The lives of all of the first responders and their families were changed drastically from their public service.
On "researchgate.net" there are 28 separate citations of this article. They consist of a range of articles mostly dealing with the subject of biosecurity. I could not find any references that weren't on researchgate.
NYC Dept of Correction,
Legal Aid Society,
Susi Vassallo - monitored temperatures on Rikers Island,
Rikers,
Hailey-Means, Freddie McGrier (both inmates)
The article shows a number of responses historically that show competition among people or organizations who are conducting inquiries. The article provides a great deal of information and primary-source testimony that described the responses to various incidents. This testimony provided insight into how much people fought over who was to blame after disasters, and that people's rhetoric when discussing that has not changed greatly over time. This article supported its argument by including facts spread over the three other disasters mentioned.