Dettwyler writes about the CARE health projects in villages around Macina in northern Mali. In my essay I have discussed the goals of the CARE health projects which were to increase the sanitation standards in the villages as well as help which the prevention of illness. I discussed the problems that the village people faced which include unsanitary drink water, lack of immunizations, unsanitary living (around villages and in home), and birth hygiene. I also talked about the methods that the CARE health project used which were educating villagers, building things for the villages, and providing sanitary equipment to the villagers. Lastly I discussed how the CARE health project methods were used when trying to help the villagers deal with their problems. Some examples of things they did to help the villagers with their problems are educating them on sanitation in the villages, homemade oral rehydration solutions, building wells for them, and providing new material such as immunizations and birthing equipment. Overall the CARE health projects had a positive impact on the villages around northern Macina in Mali by providing solutions to the problems that the villagers…
The huge problems that these countries face show us that assistance from the rest of the world to allow LDC’s to even begin a process of development is necessary. Poor economic policies in the past that have left them economically isolated from the rest of the world, only further encouraged by bad governance and corruption have led to the poor situations that these countries now face. Only worsened by problems such as drought, desertification, civil war- which has killed more through famine and hunger than through actual conflict- and weak economies. Without any significant global position in the trading world, developing countries, mainly in Africa, are in desperate need of assistance.…
Economics plays a huge role in the villages and cities of Mali. When Dettwyler returned to Bamako, six years after her first visit, she explains that Bamako, even though it’s in the same country, differs substantially from a village outside of Bamako named Magnambougou. The people of Bamako (close to a million people) live in traditional mud huts along the bluffs and banks of the Niger River (Dettwyler 1994: 18), whereas the people of Magnambougou live in “compounds” along dirt paths surrounding the community center. These compounds are made of mud bricks and topped with corrugated iron roofs. A misconception that Americans tend to think is these types of housing automatically makes a third-world country and that they are poor; it is…
- Many countries especially developing ones, do not possess the same health and sanitary safeguards like their counterparts in developed…
In the ethnography, “Dancing Skeletons, the author Katherine Dettwyler describes many reasons for her research in Mali. The main focus of her research was too attack the problem of malnourished children and to figure out what diseases they were struggling with. This ethnography detailed Dettwyler’s second trip to Mali, and she wanted to relocate many of the children she had previously measured, as well as add more children to her study. Throughout the ethnography, Dettwyler makes it very clear that the malnutrition of these children is a major problem in Mali. She describes many of the children she measures and the picture she paints in one’s mind is horrifying. One of the many diseases she comes across is Kwashiorkor, or funu bana (which means “swelling sickness”). Dettwyler allows you to feel the pain of this disease by detailing a young girl, “ Her face was round and puffy, almost as though she had been beaten… but the defining characteristic was her enormously swollen abdomen…her expression was one of sadness and apathy, her eyes sunken and dull”(Dettwyler 1994:71,72). This description allows the reader to feel for these children and understand the immense hardships that they have to deal with every day. The problem of malnourished children stems from the lack of education within the community. The children all the way up to the adults do not know, or in some cases do not have the resources to drink and eat correctly, or clean themselves. There are a tremendous amount of examples in this ethnography that support this but one of the most troubling is when the teenaged boy tells Dettwyler that his red urine was, “part of growing up”(Dettwyler 1994:46). She later realized that many cultures believe that the red urine is a sign of being sexually mature and when in reality this was an example of a person with schistosomiasis. This disease is caused by parasites that burrow through the skin ending up in the urinary tract and can be fatal.…
Public Health is an issue that affects us all. Society as whole is unhealthy if even the smallest part of the population is being put in harm's way in terms of personal health. One of the main problems that affect many communities, especially this with low income, is living in a food desert. People are put in a situation in which they need to obtain that wh…
The course will focus on critical challenges to the health of the poor in low- and middle-income countries and pay particular attention to how these health gaps can be addressed in low-cost and highly effective ways. The course will cover the architecture of global health, key trends in approaches to meeting the health needs of the poor in low- and middle-income countries, and how science and technology can be harnessed for this purpose. It will examine the burden of disease and the determinants of this burden. It will cover the leading causes of illnesses, disability, and premature death from communicable and non-communicable diseases, with special attention to women and children. It will focus particular attention on key health systems issues and recent efforts to overcome them, even in low-income settings. The course will be conducted largely through interactive discussions. There will also be some guest speakers in the class, usually via Skype. Readings will focus on helping students gain an understanding of the most fundamental issues on key topics and how they can be addressed. Case studies on both issues and on solutions to them will be employed in both assignments and in class. Students will be asked to prepare 3 policy briefs of 6 pages each for the course. There will be no mid-term or final examination.…
Djibo is a small village in northern Burkina Faso located in West Africa. The United nations have named the country of Burkina Faso to be the fourth poorest in the World.(“Bukina Faso”) Djibo lacks and adequate amount of necessities need to maintain a healthy life style, and the resources they do have are now being shared with thousands of Malian refugees. The village has become a new home for Malian refugees seeking sanctuary and a UNHAR camp has been built to assist. A new disease has been identified in the region by a WHO official and needs to be rapidly addressed. The disease is found particularly in children and results in symptoms of fever, seizures, chills, cough, muscle…
Target Populations Presentation Individuals in Poverty LEARNING TEAM “D” MARCH 9, 2015 BSHS/355 JOYCE YIP GREEN Overview Slide 1- Title Cover Slide 2- Overview Slides 3-4 Problems Individuals in Poverty faces in both organizations.…
World leaders established eight Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) and identified several indicators to monitor progress, several of which relate directly to health. All the goals and their targets are measured in terms of progress since 1990. Reporting on progress towards the MDGs has underscored the importance of producing more reliable and timely data. While some countries have made impressive gains in achieving health-related targets, others are falling behind. Often the countries making the least progress are those affected by high levels of human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) / acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AID) economic hardship or conflict. In this presentation we will discuss in detail one of the eight MDGs which is, Eradicate extreme poverty and hunger…
A bloodless coup in 1978 saw a group of young officers set up a 14-member Military Committee for National Liberation (CLMN). This committee tried to improve the economic situation in the country but faced internal political struggles; these struggles have continued over the years and are one of the main issues which Mali faces as a country…
The Sub-Saharan area of Africa is one of the most beautiful areas of the continent, but also one of the most death-dealing. The region is full of disease, terrorism, and accidents, with little places for healthcare to treat those who are ill or injured. The International Finance Corporation, or IFC for short, is the largest multilateral shareowner for private health and education in the world. Their article, Health and Education in Africa argues that to fix the health crisis in the area, spending on health will need to increase. While another author, Annie Kelly of the guardian, argues that working community structures will lead to the most sturdy improvements in healthcare. Both of these articles use their rhetorical appeals well however,…
Diabetes is a chronic lifelong disease where there are high traces of sugar in the blood. A diabetic individuals pancreas secrets an insufficient amount of insulin or does not use the insulin efficiently. Insulin is a hormone made in the pancreas that enables the body to use glucose for energy. Diabetes is caused by too little insulin, resistance to insulin or both. Diabetes is the most common disorder of the human hormone system; there are three forms of diabetes.…
The disease that I did my risk assessment on was bladder cancer. Bladder cancer is when cells in the urinary bladder lining starts to divide uncontrollably and are no longer able to control their growth. A mass of cells form from an abnormal growth causing tumors. According to the American Cancer Society or (ACS) bladder cancer is the 6th most common cancer in the United States. They approximate that over 54,300 people will be diagnosed in 2014 and cause more than 12,400 deaths. The purpose of your urinary bladder is to store urine from the kidneys. Bladder cancer has a very high percentage of coming back once you are in remission with a 75% chance that new tumors will develop again. Normally the first thing that you notice when you have bladder cancer is blood in your urine, other warning signs are change of color in you urine and pain when urinating.…
When I did the assessment for chronic diseases I chose to do one for Diabetes because I am considered obese with a BMI of 39.9 so with this certain risk factor of obesity I run the risk of developing diabetes, the assessment states “Compared to a typical woman my age, my risk of developing diabetes is ABOVE AVERAGE” that is very scary because I know that diabetes can be dangerous and cause many other health problems, also it runs in my family, my father developed diabetes because of his weight, and now he does not have any working kidneys and has to do dialysis 4 days a week and requires a transplant, so my chances are high up there.…