COVID-19 Alert Project
This essay will provide a portal into work in response to COVID-19.
This essay will provide a portal into work in response to COVID-19.
Emergency response is addressed in different ways in this article. In terms of true emergency response during and immediately following the disaster, examples of emergency response can be seen in the recounting of those that were interviewed, but they weren't explicitly discussed in the article. The article does however extensively discuss aid that followed the disaster and discusses that aspect of emergency response, and more so the recovery and resiliency aspects of it. Such as government funding, aid relief, conditions in which things were left, hardships that those who survived came back and had to deal with, how medical care, socioeconomic factors and much more were highly effected post Katrina.
The way that countries and the world address nuclear emergencies is addressed in this article. Currently there is no central international response resources or authority. Because of the rarity of nuclear catastrophic nuclear emergencies, there are few pockets of professionals with field experience with dealing with these types of emergencies. Japan greatly lacked the assistance of these people during this disaster. These things all contribute to a less optimal emergency response. By addressing these issues the quality of response to nuclear emergencies can be greatly increased.
Dr. Kramer refers to various people in various medical cases but redacts their names.
The Journal of the American Medical Association and the medical community as a whole embraced “evidence based medicine” back in the 90s and claimed that individual case stories were inferior, antiquated, and a thing of the past.
Oxford University press and the New England Journal of Medicine started writing case reports embracing stories.
The data used to support the argument includes numerous publications by other authors providing information on the correlation between mental health and disasters. Background information on different disorders is also provided as well as interviews and case studies from patients and doctor as well as experts on the topic.
The article: “Structural Violence and Clinical Medicine” was written by Paul E Farmer, Bruce Nizeye, Sara Stulac, and Salmaan Keshavjee. Paul Farmer is an anthropologist and physician who works professionally as a humanitarian healthcare worker in impoverished nations, physician at Brigham and Women’s Hospital Division of Social Medicine and Health Inequalities, Professor at Harvard University, and cofounder of Partners In Health. Bruce Nizeye is a Director of the Program on Social and Economic Rights. Sara Stulac is a Director of Pediatric Programs at Inshuti Mu Buzima, in Rwanda, and Partners In Health’s deputy chief medical officer. Salmaan Keshavjee is also a physician at Brigham and Women’s Hospital, an instructor at Harvard’s Department of Medicine, and a specialist at Partners In Health on tuberculosis.
It is important to understand the work of Partners in Health (PIH) is to assist underdeveloped countries build high quality healthcare systems, when talking about the authors’ work.
1) “‘A confusion between humanitarianism and politics–two fundamentally different orders of activity – can only lead to a mutual weakening of both”.
2) “Approaching gender-based violence as a medical or health issue alters how violence is both approached and understood; that is, rather than understanding gender violence in the context of gendered relations of power, or as part of larger histories and expressions of inequality which are inseparable from histories of class or race or colonialism, this type of medicalisation transforms gender-based violence into an emergency illness, requiring immediate intervention.”
3) “Sexual violence elicited a particular form of moral outrage in the MSF report and debate; and the question was how to justify the willingness to condemn the perpetrators in cases of rape more than with other forms of violence or torture. Should women be !C 2011 Blackwell Publishing Ltd. Medicalising and Politicising Sexual Violence 259 treated as special categories of victim, who need more protection? Furthermore, are they the only ones recognised as subject to rape? Should sex and sexual violence be seen as crimes apart, or should they be equivalent to any type of harm or injury in times of war? What is the nature of gender-based violence, and how do we qualify the particular vulnerabilities to it?”
The Chernobyl nuclear power plant explosion in 1986 led to a ten day reactor fire that resulted in a large and unknown amount of radiation spilling into the surrounding areas in Ukraine. This caused the contamination of the environments and those around the reactor. Hundreds of thousands of people had to evacuate and to this day it remains to be an issue. Due to this controversy that still surrounds this disaster, the IAEA, FAO, UNDP, UNEP, OCHA, UNSCEAR and WHO created the Chernobyl Forum. They generate "authoritative consensual statements" on the environmental consequences due to the radiation exposure. Ultimately they and this event in Chernobyl are what called for this report.
Andrew Lakoff is an Associate Professor of Sociology and Communication at the University of Southern California, Department of Sociology. His disciplines are: Social Theory, Medical Anthropology, and Cultural Anthropology.
Stephen Collier holds a Ph.D in Sociocultural Anthropology at the University of California Berkeley, Department of Department of Sociology. His disciplines are Social Policy, Social Theory, Social Theory, Foucault, and Neoliberalism. He was also Chair and Associate Professor at The New School, Department of International Affairs from 2003-2015.
Although they are not directly involved in emergency response, Stephen and Andrew have written extensively on the social aspects of medicine, especially in disaster scenarios.
A main focus of this article was the emergency response to nuclear power plant disaster at the Fukushima Daiichi power plant, or in better words, the lack there of. Points and arguments made include the fact that this won't be the last the world sees of nuclear mishap and risk and also the severe need to not only depend on accident prevention, but focus must be shifted onto being prepared during emergencies. During the essay the author point blank states that, the essay is to raise awareness on the need for the creation of an "international nuclear response team." The essay then focuses on what we can learn from the nuclear accident in Japan in order to establish better post emergency protocols and responses.
Overall, Schmid outlines the fact that changes need to be made on a global level. She illustrates where there are shortcomings in current protocols and the desperate need to establish a team that is equipped and trained to response to nuclear mishaps, such as the one seen in Japan. She also accentuates the need for this response team to be established should be fast and that we can no longer drag our feet, citing dangers seen at Fukushima, Three Mile Island and Chernobyl.