Thursday, December 17, 2009
Alberta's Red Neck Hydrocarbon Junkie Fundamentalists
Sunday, December 6, 2009
Thursday, December 3, 2009
From the Archives
Wednesday, November 18, 2009
Fieldnotes: Landmines Persist
There are too many buried landmines in Afghanistan to find them all. Demining is slow and expensive. The United Nations has estimated that removing the world’s active mines will cost between $33 and $85 billion. If no more mines were laid, and at the present rate of mine-clearance it would take about 1100 years to clear all the landmines.
Thursday, October 22, 2009
Security, Cowboys, Irrational Fear Mongers, and Fanatics
Sunday, October 18, 2009
Fieldnotes: Trachoma in Ethiopia
There are an estimated 38 million blind people in the world, and 28 million of them unnecessarily. Trachoma is the world’s leading cause of preventable and treatable blindness. Spread by flies, this ancient disease of poverty and poor sanitation is pandemic in the Soddo and Gurage districts of Ethiopia. As trachoma progresses, often for decades, the eyelids turn inward, and scratch the eyeball causing unbearable itching, infection, and scarring that inevitably leads to blindness if not treated, early, with what amounts to a dollar’s worth of antibiotics, or, later, with surgery.
Asra Tsakik, a Field Health Coordinator checks the eyes of Workete Gujama. He is looking for the presence of follicles, inflammation, or scarring. For the early stages of trachoma, a six-week course of antibiotics (with tetracycline, erythromycin, or sulfonamides) is prescribed, or a single dose of azithromycin. Children are infected the most and women more than men, because they spend more time with children. Surveys show that 34% of the children in these villages suffer from active trachoma. Water shortages, poor hygiene, and crowded living conditions are at the root of trachoma.
Wednesday, October 14, 2009
A Crisis of Wisdom.