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I am currently in the process of transitioning my M.A. level course on Science, Technology, and Development with 11 students to virtual instruction. One of my interests in engaging with COVID-19 is to examine how it (should) informs development ideologies and practices. How should students of development studies retool -- conceptually, methodologically, practically -- in wake of the pandemic?

• The article referenced the Congo Republic’s Civil War as an incident responsible for a significant amount of sexual violence, I looked into the conditions there for non-military citizens in order to better understand the significance of government in public health.
• While looking into the history of Congo the issues of neutrality for organizations such as the Red Cross, the idea being that if humanitarian aid organizations do not provide an advantage for either side of a conflict they will be allowed to provide aid to more individuals. This has proven quite effective but does often mean that aid workers are left mostly undefended in areas of conflict as neither side will protect them from the other.
• Finally, I looked into the statistics of rape worldwide which showed not only that rape is still highly prevalent in all cultures but also that the reporting rates for rape are inaccurate in many countries without significant health infrastructure or a government interest in preventing or aiding survivors of sexual violence. 

This article used, testimonials, field research and analysis of the healthcare system and govermental policies. 

The argument is made using footage from the events occurring in Monrovia during the Ebola outbreak and subsequent months, which allows for the audience to truly understand the difficulties and horrors caused by disease. The film did not include much scientific data on the virus, only stating that 11,000 people had died and over twice that many had contracted the virus. Due to the public awareness of the Ebola epidemic, as it occurred so recently, and the graphic footage included, the film invokes feelings of horror and sadness for the many who couldn’t be helped.

• “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.”
• “Conclusions on violence in the healthcare setting are limited and it is difficult to examine whether or not certain sectors of aid work, such as health, are more dangerous than others. This has consequences for analyzing the drivers of violence. Within humanitarian communities and the media, and, to a lesser extent, within some sectors of academia, portrayals of violence directly affecting health service delivery in complex security environments often accentuate nebulous, macro-level factors such as the ‘shrinking humanitarian space,’”
• “increased collaboration in data collection and data sharing is essential, both between academics, human rights NGOs and organizations delivering health services and among representatives of the latter group. As part of this, aid organizations could do more to make their anonymized data public in order to support global responses on prevention and accountability”

The system relies on relationships with scientific institutions, government institutions, and educational institutions. 

Emergency response is not addressed in terms of the immediate response. The article focuses instead on the aftermath of the incident on Sept. 11th, dealing primarily with the cleanup efforts and investigation that followed in an effort to provide closure to the public and resume the regular business of the city, both important steps in recovering from a disaster.

The author Sonja D.  Schmid is an assistant professor at Virgina Tech. She specializes in the history of technology, science and technology policy, and social studies of risk. In respect to emergency response, Schmid has studied how agencies and personnel responded to nuclear disasters in the former Soviet Union and Eastern Europe. Schmid has written many articles in regard to emergency response and nuclear disasters her most recent being: Schmid, Sonja D. "What If There's a next Time? Preparedness after Chernobyl and Fukushima - A European-American Response." Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists. N.p., 01 July 2016. Web. 05 Sept. 2015

I looked further into land fill decomposition and other "islands" that have been made on landfills. I also looked further into the legal history of Riker Island and the typical inmates that are sent to this facility. 

The article has not been referenced extensively, as it is focused on a very specific topic. However the ideas presented in the article, and by extension the ideas presented in the book have been included in other papers including some of the author's later works.