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Harvard World Health News highlights:
Poverty Fuels Medical Crisis
By Laura Ungar, The Courier-Journal, Sunday, September 25, 2005
Poverty is the single biggest reason Kentucky is one of America's sickest states.
Not only is Kentucky one of the nation's poorest states, but it also is plagued by a type of poverty that makes things even worse — rural poverty that has eroded health for generations.
In Harlan County, for instance, men can only expect to live to 66, Harvard University statistics from 2001 say. That's a shorter life span than men in the developing countries of Turkey, Ecuador and Colombia.
Charles Brock, who lives in an old trailer in Harlan County, turned 66 this year. Because of his income, he's forgoing blood pressure and ulcer medication and even recently used insulin injections a relative gave him after her diabetic mother died.
In Harlan and other rural counties, people are less likely to have jobs or health insurance and more likely to live with severe doctor shortages and transportation problems.
And they die at higher rates.
( Read More )
Paging Dr. Welby: The medical sins of Grey's Anatomy
By Ingrid Katz and Alexi Wright, Slate, September 26, 2005
Last night, on the season's first episode of Grey's Anatomy, surgical intern Meredith Grey was drafted to help a pediatric surgeon, who happens to be her boyfriend's wife, operate on a pregnant woman, who happens to have lost her husband to an affair. Genius. As doctors, though, we haven't been dreading the show's reappearance because of its silly plot twists. We have a professional beef with Grey's Anatomy: Along with House, the other hospital show on the air at the moment, it is medically far-fetched and misleading. Most of all, we dislike the show because it loses sight of the point of any medical enterprise—the patients.
( Read More )
Women pay a price in war on Afghan drug trade: Poppy debts paid with daughters
By Farah Stockman, The Boston Globe, September 28, 2005
SHINWAR, Afghanistan -- In the thirsty hills of Nangarhar province, debt is a way of life. Every autumn, sharecroppers take loans from drug traffickers to plant their poppy crops. After every harvest, they repay them in poppies, which are eventually turned into heroin.
This year, a US-backed eradication effort has sharply cut Nangarhar's lucrative poppy cultivation, but the sharecroppers' debts remain. Now, some of the region's poorest farmers say they are being forced to repay traffickers with the only thing they have left: their daughters.
Giving a daughter to repay a debt is a rare but age-old practice among the rural tribesmen of Afghanistan. A payment of last resort, the daughter is almost always given as a bride to the money-lender or to his son, but is sometimes given as a servant, according to the International Organization for Migration.
( Read More )
Poverty Fuels Medical Crisis
By Laura Ungar, The Courier-Journal, Sunday, September 25, 2005
Poverty is the single biggest reason Kentucky is one of America's sickest states.
Not only is Kentucky one of the nation's poorest states, but it also is plagued by a type of poverty that makes things even worse — rural poverty that has eroded health for generations.
In Harlan County, for instance, men can only expect to live to 66, Harvard University statistics from 2001 say. That's a shorter life span than men in the developing countries of Turkey, Ecuador and Colombia.
Charles Brock, who lives in an old trailer in Harlan County, turned 66 this year. Because of his income, he's forgoing blood pressure and ulcer medication and even recently used insulin injections a relative gave him after her diabetic mother died.
In Harlan and other rural counties, people are less likely to have jobs or health insurance and more likely to live with severe doctor shortages and transportation problems.
And they die at higher rates.
( Read More )
Paging Dr. Welby: The medical sins of Grey's Anatomy
By Ingrid Katz and Alexi Wright, Slate, September 26, 2005
Last night, on the season's first episode of Grey's Anatomy, surgical intern Meredith Grey was drafted to help a pediatric surgeon, who happens to be her boyfriend's wife, operate on a pregnant woman, who happens to have lost her husband to an affair. Genius. As doctors, though, we haven't been dreading the show's reappearance because of its silly plot twists. We have a professional beef with Grey's Anatomy: Along with House, the other hospital show on the air at the moment, it is medically far-fetched and misleading. Most of all, we dislike the show because it loses sight of the point of any medical enterprise—the patients.
( Read More )
Women pay a price in war on Afghan drug trade: Poppy debts paid with daughters
By Farah Stockman, The Boston Globe, September 28, 2005
SHINWAR, Afghanistan -- In the thirsty hills of Nangarhar province, debt is a way of life. Every autumn, sharecroppers take loans from drug traffickers to plant their poppy crops. After every harvest, they repay them in poppies, which are eventually turned into heroin.
This year, a US-backed eradication effort has sharply cut Nangarhar's lucrative poppy cultivation, but the sharecroppers' debts remain. Now, some of the region's poorest farmers say they are being forced to repay traffickers with the only thing they have left: their daughters.
Giving a daughter to repay a debt is a rare but age-old practice among the rural tribesmen of Afghanistan. A payment of last resort, the daughter is almost always given as a bride to the money-lender or to his son, but is sometimes given as a servant, according to the International Organization for Migration.
( Read More )
