This whole article interested me, seeing that we can track down the roots of the problem. With the knowledge that we can track down the sources of the problem, we could potentially stop things like this from happening in the first place. It comes down to what our parents have told us since we were young, it stinks that it happened, but we are learning the hard way. With every new outbreak of these diseases, new things are being discovered that will help us in the future to postpone or even stop these atrocities. Haiti now has the highest Cholera infection rate in the world right now. Hopefully this is the last times that we have to deal with cholera, and we have learned from our mistakes. And hopefully this process can be applied to many other epidemic diseases, not just Cholera.
This was written by the Washington Post on Monday, January 9th, 2012.
This article greatly connects to the Lewis Baby in the Broad Street Pump we discussed during class. The fact that they were able to track down the first case of Cholera in Haiti is impressive, but I am more impressed that they were able to accomplish the same advance in earlier times with the Lewis baby. I completely agree that new discoveries are capable of stopping outbreaks of disease such as cholera but the source of the outbreak confuses me. In class, I'm not sure if it was in the documentary or we just were told about it, but I was under the interpretation that the first cholera outbreak in Haiti was not a mentally ill man but a volunteer from another country working with the relief effort. I'm not sure which is since we have heard of both, so I wonder if the Lewis baby outbreak was really the source since we seem to have different people known as the source of the outbreak.
ReplyDeleteI agree with Anjali, this story is much like the Cholera case we learned about in class with the Lewis Baby and the Broad Street pump. It's interesting and really weird to see that this disease is and can still be prevalent today. Even with the knowledge we (and scientists) have, it's still this hard to be able to stop the spread of disease. I also agree with Greg, that it's really interesting to see how we can track down the origin of a disease. Also, how these methods have changed over time from the Broad Street Pump to the River in Haiti. It's good to use information from past diseases to help solve and deal with new diseases, or when diseases have another epidemic. I think it's sad that Cholera has the highest infection rate in the world and I really hope this can be fixed in the near future, with technology and knowledge of epidemic diseases.
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