Category Archives: healthcare

Unaffordable Health Care By Any Other Name | National Women’s Law Center

Imagine you and your spouse have an annual income of $47,700. It costs $100 a month, or $1,200 a year, for you to buy health insurance through your employer. That’s about 2.5% of your income.  It costs another $500 a month to add your spouse –— over 12.5% of your income. According to the IRS test, you and your spouse have affordable coverage because your coverage is only 2.5% of your income. It doesn’t matter how expensive your spouse’s coverage is – it could cost $2,000 a month and your family coverage would still be considered affordable.

via Unaffordable Health Care By Any Other Name | National Women’s Law Center.

Water Cut-off in Detroit Violates Human Rights, Say Activists | Inter Press Service

“This is unprecedented,” said Maude Barlow, founder of the Blue Planet Project, a group that advocates water as a human right.

“I visited the city and worked with the Detroit People’s Water Board several weeks ago and came away terribly upset,” she told IPS.

“Water bills are regressive, so low-income households pay a disproportionate amount of their income for water service.” — Mary Grant, researcher at Food & Water Watch

She pointed out that hundreds of thousands of people, mostly African Americans, are having their water ruthlessly turned off.

Families with children, the elderly and the sick, cannot bathe, flush their toilets or cook in their own homes, she added.

“This is the worst violation of the human right to water I have ever seen outside of the worst slums in the poorest countries in failed states of the global South,” said Barlow, a one-time senior advisor on water to a former President of the U.N. General Assembly.

Last March, the Detroit Water and Sewerage Department (DWSD) announced plans to shut off water service for 1,500 to 3,000 customers every week if their water bills were not paid. And on Tuesday, the City Council approved an 8.7-percent water rate increase.

According to a DWSD document, more than 80,000 residential households – in a city of 680,000 people – are in arrears, with thousands of families without water, and thousands more expected to lose access at any moment.

via Water Cut-off in U.S. City Violates Human Rights, Say Activists | Inter Press Service.

Sierra Leone News: Health Minister Miatta Kargbo Mocks Nurse who died of Ebola: Sierra Leone News

Sierra Leone’s Minister of Health and Sanitation Miss Miatta Kargbo has appeared in Parliament yesterday June 17th 2014 to speak on the Ebola menace now ravaging Kailahun district and posing a threat to Sierra Leone. Whilst she appeared with many facts to defend her ministry, the minister went on to shock many by describing two of her deceased staff with promiscuous references of illicit, extra-marital sexual affairs. As citizens listened in horror, she openly identified the male staff by name and went on to say the female staff died because she was in a sexual relationship with the male staff. However, her claims were to be swiftly debunked by the elected parliamentarian for Daru.

via Sierra Leone News: Health Minister Miatta Kargbo Mocks Nurse who died of Ebola: Sierra Leone News.

[India] With She-Toilets, Chennai shows way in sanitation | WNN – Women News Network

“This is also the first time Chennai Corporation has done a detailed survey and mapping of where public toilets are required and where the public oppose it,” said a senior corporation official. “Earlier the corporation would only ask the zonal engineer where to put up a toilet.” These 348 locations include bus stands, markets and open spaces.

The toilets will come as a relief to women who work outdoors all day such as vendors, construction workers and police officers. “We have to stand on the road for at least five hours while on bandobast duty,” said Leela Sri, a woman constable. “There are very few public toilets that we can use and most of them are filthy.” Leela, who has been on the job for 11 years, said she and her female colleagues are prone to urinary tract infections and fibroids. “If more of these toilets for women come up, the next generation of policewomen need not face such health problems,” she says. Kerala State Women’s Development Corporation recently introduced these toilets . . .

via [India] With She-Toilets, Chennai shows way in sanitation | WNN – Women News Network.

Caribbean chikungunya cases top 170,000 | CIDRAP

The number of chikungunya cases in parts of the Caribbean continued to surge last week, pushing past 170,000 cases, with the first cases confirmed in El Salvador, west of the main outbreak area, and more imported cases detected in the United States and other countries. {Will not be long before all of Central America is effected and then Mexico, Texas, Mississippi, Louisiana, Alabama, Georgia, Florida – all from people visiting the currently effected areas – coming home infected and getting bitten by local mosquitoes!}

The outbreak has grown to 170,566 suspected or confirmed cases of the mosquito-borne disease, which is 35,139 higher than the 135,427 cases reported the previous week, according to a Jun 13 report from the Pan American Health Organization (PAHO). The number of deaths remained the same, at 14.

Over the past few weeks, most new cases are suspected infections reported from the Latin Caribbean countries, such as the Dominican Republic, where suspected cases rose from 52,976 to 77,320 last week. Guadaloupe and Martinique also reported thousands of new cases, but no new case totals were given for Haiti, another country that has recently been hard hit by the outbreak.

In the non-Latin areas that were mainly affected earlier in the outbreak, new cases were reported by Dominica, the Turks and Caicos Islands, and the US Virgin Islands.

via Caribbean chikungunya cases top 170,000 | CIDRAP.

Ebola update | Sierra Express Media

Ebola was officially confirmed in Sierra Leone on Sunday May 25th this year and only one (1) woman was confirmed having the disease.

Below are official up dates of Ebola suspected cases, confirmed cased and death rates respectively

Date

Suspected cases

Confirmed cases

Dead

Monday 2nd June 2014

36

15

5

Thursday 6th June 2014

71

24

6

Monday 9th June 2014

109

42

12

via Ebola update | Sierra Express Media.

Creating a new dependency, even if done out of love- will it help? New KC center for homeless veterans offers ‘homes for the brave’ | The Kansas City Star

{Few, very few homes as a solution, even though there are more warehoused vacant one and two family homes with two bedrooms than there are homeless veterans in the US.

It is hard, I guess, to help people as individuals so everything is industrialized, so to speak, and warehousing the elderly, the disabled, or veterans is the way that gets the most attention and money. Living independently is the American dream but not if you are poor and elderly, disabled, or a veteran who needs some help back up.}

St. Michael’s Veterans Center officially opens the first of three planned buildings, with 58 apartment units for homeless veterans and a full complement of social services in the same building. Many say the project is unusual and innovative, especially in this region.

“It’s far more beautiful than I ever imagined it would or could be,” Fillmore said of the three-story edifice at 3838 Chelsea Drive, on a hill just south of the VA Medical Center. “It doesn’t resemble anything but first-rate market housing.”

via New KC center for homeless veterans offers ‘homes for the brave’ | The Kansas City Star.

{The assumption is that they are broken and need counseling – but maybe they just need financial help to get back up and would want to pay some back to help others later on?}

Avian Flu Diary: PAHO: Chikungunya Numbers Jump Nearly 30K In Past Week

While rarely fatal, Chikungunya can produce a severe fever and excruciating joint pain usually lasting for at least a week.  Some studies (cite) indicate significant arthritis-like sequelae can persist for months or even years post-infection.

 

With an incubation period of between 3 and 7 days, and the enormous amount of international travel to, and from, the Caribbean, the concern is that this virus will soon migrate to other areas that also have a favorable climate and the right kind of mosquitoes.

 

Brazil is particularly at risk this summer with the FIFA World Cup, something we discussed yesterday.

 

But then, so is the United States, and even parts of Europe (Italy saw a mini-epidemic in 2007 when just one infected traveler started a chain of infection that eventually touched 300 people).

 

The good news, at least in most of the United States, is that most of us live and work in air-conditioned spaces, and live in regions that maintain pretty good mosquito control programs, and so we aren’t as apt to be continually exposed to (and bitten by) mosquitoes as people living in the Caribbean.

 

But as a native Floridian, I can assure you that it is pretty much impossible to totally avoid feeding our unofficial `state bird’.

 

The state of Florida is concerned enough that it has issued warnings to the public, and is actively Preparing For Chikungunya.  In March the CDC held a Chikungunya Webinar and last December they released a CDC HAN Advisory On Recognizing & Treating Chikungunya Infection.

No one knows if Chikungunya will spread rapidly in the United States, like West Nile Virus has over the past 15 years, or produce infrequent and highly sporadic outbreaks, as has Dengue.

 

But given its rapid global expansion over the past nine years, no one in public health is taking the threat lightly.

via Avian Flu Diary: PAHO: Chikungunya Numbers Jump Nearly 30K In Past Week.