The Bigger Challenge

A large portion of global health's scope, and what I will focus on in this entry, pertains to the elimination of infectious diseases through effective vaccination of vulnerable, and in some cases, entire populations. Obviously, a large obstacle to vaccinating people is first, developing a vaccine, but it has recently come to global health and biomedical engineer officials' attention that there may be a bigger challenges.

The bigger challenge may be covert, only showing its face after the development of a vaccine, whereas another challenge may be more overt and be easily identified. An example of an easily identifiable overt challenge faces the development of an HIV vaccination for Africans in the Sub-Saharan. The challenge to biomedical engineers and scientists would be to develop a vaccine in which the immunogens won't denature in warm weather or to develop a protective method for transporting the vaccine during a hot day. This is only one example ,however, there may be numerous other challenges regarding vaccination methods when applied in massive populations. For these reasons it is becoming increasingly more apparent that scientists developing not only vaccines, but also drugs and therapies, while working in concert with biomedical engineers and global health officials so that they may coordinate effective health technologies and strategies for addressing global health issues.

The Truth

I find it disturbing that as United States citizens we can't rely on popular press for our news. As my colleague Farah Karahpeni comments in her post Public Health in Palestine (http://farahonhealth.blogspot.com/), we are typically only given one side of the story and it's usually the side most convenient for our government. The war in the middle east between the Israelis and the Palestinians is the best example of how by the time we get our news from the popular press it has been so filtered and polluted with bias that it can't be trusted. The Israeli government continues to oppress the Palestinians so much that regular people are being driven to fanaticism, the same fanaticism our news uses to associate negative thoughts with Muslims.

The middle east is just a small example in the midst of a sea of issues we are typically misinformed about. Just recently I watched the documentary, "An Inconvenient Truth," presented by Al Gore. The documentary opened my eyes to how much the government and industry skew what we're told through popular press so that we fall into a state of doubt and skepticism which leads to inaction. "An Inconvenient Truth" describes the past, present, and future of global warming. If Al Gore's information is true our country and world has a huge problem on its hands. With the polar ice caps melting and oceans warming mankind may have to face a whole new set of environmental problems. If you haven't seen, "An Inconvenient Truth," I would highly recommend it. It will open your eyes to the issue of global warming and hopefully make you a little less vulnerable to biased popular press and news media.
(For a little fun, check out my friends "Go Green" video).

Suicide, you'd be a lot cooler if you did

Suicide and depression, they seem to go hand in hand, that is, at least in our culture. However, a case study in Micronesia will give you a new perspective on why some global populations may get hit harder than others with waves of suicides. Before the 1960's suicide in Micronesia was virtually unheard of. Unfortunately, as described by Malcolm Gladwell in his book The Tipping Point, it became the cool thing to do and turned into a storm of suicides in the young male population. Was it from depression or delirium? The answer...neither. It all started with a boy named Sima who committed suicide just after getting yelled at by his father. From that point there have been hundreds of young male suicides over things so trivial as "a brother being obnoxiously loud." Much of this influx has to do with cultural norms. Some say that this trend in Micronesia follows patterns of imitation as a result of the theory of the tipping point, yet others believe it is a cultural form of rebelion and self expression (comparable to United States teens smoking underage). Gladwell states the practice of suicide in Micronesia has turned into a form of youthful experimentation, woops.

More to Malnutrition than what meets the eye

Life isn't fair, but in some underdeveloped countries you'd be surprised at how happy the people are with next to nothing. On my medical mission trip to Costa Rica and Nicaragua I witnessed first hand how malnutrition can have a drastic effect on seemingly a quarter out of all the children despite access to food. It wasn't obvious but it became apparent that many of the children in the tropics have sufficient foods but they are mentally underdeveloped, ill-looking, and constantly fatigued. As we examined more and more children we found that many of them had distended stomachs and had worms in their fecal matter. It came to be that many of these children had lived their entire lives with gastrointestinal parasites and never sought out medical attention. I then realized that malnutrition extends further than just establishing global food security. As a result of living with GI parasites during their first years of life children are unknowingly robbed of essential nutrients for proper mental and physical development. Many of these children were permanently mentally disabled. I believe that tackling the bigger problem, establishing food security, is first and formost but in tropical regions where food may be readily accesible there must be efforts to cure the population of GI parasites that will, if not resolved, continue to paralyze children over the generations from malnutrition.

The Rich get... fatter?

We've all heard the saying that "The rich get richer and the poor get poorer," and we once believed that only rich countries need worry about the troubles of chronic disease. Unfortunately, the troubles of chronic disease have spread across the board from the rich and the poor living in developed countries all the way to those living in developing countries. In my opinion this shift toward chronic disease in developing and poor countries may be just what the doctor didn't order. The rise in chronic disease, in most situations, is a result of the increasing ease of relying on unhealthy foods that are high in fat and sugar and also lack essential nutrients to maintaining a healthy lifestyle. In regards to countries like the United States we are fortunate to have the medical care and health preventive programs in place that we do. By having these resources chronic disease can be treated and even cured so that we may live alongside chronic disease without sacrificing quality of life. On the other hand, poor and developing countries haven't been so fortunate. Without the medical care and preventive programs in place that we have they live in a world sticken with chronic disease. This lack of resources leads to millions of deaths worldwide each year, without mention to the millions left mentally and physically disabled by their chronic disease for the remainder of their life. So now the question isn't "Why do only the rich suffer from chronic diseases" but rather "Why do the poor and developing country peoples suffer so much more from chronic disease and how can we stop chronic disease rates from increasing worldwide?"