Skip to main content

Search

Mutual Aid/Best Practices vs Local Practices

_jzhao

This image reminds me of how mutual aid and communities keep each other fed, and safe, and how local practices are actually best practices. My own research, although not immediatley related to the specific public health concern of COVID, will focus on Indigenous food soverignty, particularly the right and autonomy to ferment and distribute alcohol (紅糯米酒) within the Amis community, and their current fight with the local health department on declaring whether or not their alcohol is "safe" for public consumption and distribution.

pece_annotation_1475250372

maryclare.crochiere

Didier Fassin is an anthropologist and sociologist. He was a doctor trained in internal medicine and public health, and has taken to working on humanitarian projects. He writes this article from this combination perspective - with a medical background as well as anthropology and sociology experience. He focuses more on his position and knowledge of the latter, as he writes with with politics and humanitiarianism in mind

pece_annotation_1476149439

maryclare.crochiere

This study has been cited in several other articles and studies that look at disaster and intimate partner violence. Some focus on specific areas such as costal regions, others bring in other factors such as depression.

pece_annotation_1480096435

maryclare.crochiere

"Among inhabitants of Kyiv and other urban centers, there is a growing consensus that the invalids are "parasites of the state, dam aging the economy, not paying taxes." Many youths who had been evacuated from the zone do not want to be associated with groups of sufferers as this association makes it more difficult for them to find employment.

"Another administrator who authenticated com pensation claims told me illnesses had become a form of currency. "There are a lot of people out of work," he said. "People don't have enough money to eat. The state doesn't give medicines for free anymore. Drug stores are commercialized." He likened his work to that of a bank. "The diagnosis we write is money.""

"Symon Lavrov, was well-regarded internationally for having developed computerized fallout models and calculating population-wide doses in the post-Soviet period. He told me, how ever, that "when a crying mother comes to my laboratory and asks me, Professor Lavrov, 'tell me what's wrong with my child?' I assign her a dose and say nothing more. I double it, as much as I can." The offer of a higher dose increased the likelihood that the mother would be able to secure social protection on account of her potentially sick child.""

pece_annotation_1480108326

maryclare.crochiere

Stories are important in medicine. Numbers are important too, but sometimes the stories can tell particular cases of success, where numbers would brush over or fail to show the significance. Stories can tell much more than numbers sometimes, and that must be regocnized and appreciated. Especially in specialties where it is hard to always measure data, quotes, stories, and recollections can be more accurate.

pece_annotation_1473262676

maryclare.crochiere
Annotation of

The mission statement summarizes the aim of the Partners in Health as "to bring the benefits of modern medical science to those most in need of them and to serve as an antidote to despair". They are available to many of the suffering third-world countries that lack modern medicine. They are aided by the most prominent health care leaders in the world. They want to treat those in need of medical care like family, not just giving, but making them feel like they belong and are deserving of the same level of care.