Para Os Meus Netos. Quando Do Término Da Minha Graduação Elaborei Algumas Peças Em Feltro Para Auxiliar

Sutil Sedosa Sensual

Um texto acima das paixões.

Um olhar apenas.

Tōshi Yoshida 吉田 遠志 (1911 – 1995) Birds of the Seasons - Summer, circa 1982

Fofis!!!

kazuaki horitomo’s tattooed cats.

Don’t Be Alarmed; Be Careful

 I’ve seen a few headlines covering this story in a very sensationalist way. Though the shock factor may get more hits, I feel that that’s irresponsible. Panic can cause people to act irrationally. So before you make a snap judgement from the map, please read the rest of the article. One of the ways we can hope to minimise the casualties is if people are careful and informed.

 When autoimmune deficiency (AIDS) reached the public eye in the 1980s, very little was known about it, and what information there was wasn’t always easily available. Much of the information was spread by public hysteria through word of mouth and misguided sensationalist media. You could be forgiven for thinking that it was an unstoppable bioweapon; some people did and still do. It was believed you could contract the virus simply through close contact with another person.

Unfortunately, we’re seeing the emergence of a disease which fits the profile of what the public thought AIDS could be in the 1980s.  A recent document published by the World Health Organisation (WHO) estimates around 75 million deaths worldwide by 2050 due to two emerging strains of tuberculosis (TB). These are known as multidrug-resistant tuberculosis (MDR-TB) and extensively drug-resistant tuberculosis (XDR-TB). Tuberculosis certainly doesn’t have the same level of exposure and public awareness that HIV/AIDS does, yet TB kills the second largest number of people worldwide, second to HIV/AIDS. On top of this, it is also the greatest killer of people with HIV/AIDS through secondary infection, killing a quarter of those who contract HIV.

Tuberculosis is spread by coughs and sneezing, as the bacteria are suspended in mucous and saliva droplets. This can then transfer onto objects and surfaces where it can survive for hours. Though the projections are estimated to affect mostly developing countries, we must remember that humans can and will travel, so this disease will easily be spread.

For so long, TB has gone mostly ignored, apart from in the UK  where the British government has ordered small badger culls since 2013 to prevent the spread of bovine TB. Until this year, the US government was only concerned with prevention in its own citizens, the Obama administration has now released a 3-5 year plan to fund research and aid to tackle these drug-resistant strains in the developing world as of September 2015. With the UK currently undergoing proposals within both the House of Commons and the House of Lords on how to proceed, hopefully other wealthy nations will follow suit to try and eradicate this pathogen before we see too many more casualties.

So remember: Sneeze into the crook of your elbow, wash your hands, and try not to spread coughs and sneezes. By being publicly conscious, we can do our part.

-Will

A public information booklet can be found here: http://media.wix.com/ugd/309c93_f0731d24f4754cd4a0ac0d6f6e67a526.pdf

A fact sheet here: http://www.who.int/tb/challenges/mdr/mdr_tb_factsheet.pdf

And a paper here: https://idsa.confex.com/idsa/2015/webprogram/Paper50670.html