The United Nations humanitarian office reports that 9,971 cases of cholera have been confirmed in Haiti, and 643 people have died from the disease. The Associated Press reported earlier this week that the epidemic has spread into Port-au-Prince, where close to half of the city’s nearly 3 million residents are living in tent camps erected […]
It’s a relief that Hurricane Tomas didn’t destroy the camps in and around Port-au-Prince where 1.3 million survivors of Haiti’s January earthquake are crowded. The storm hit western Haiti hardest, causing flooding and killing 20 people. There are still concerns about how flooding will affect Haiti’s cholera outbreak. The outbreak’s official death toll is 544, […]
The United Nations Human Settlements Programme, UN-HABITAT, is tasked with promoting “socially and environmentally sustainable towns and cities with the goal of providing adequate shelter for all.” The agency’s new executive director, former Barcelona mayor Joan Clos, gave his first formal address to the UN General Assembly and outlined some of the priorities for improving […]
The Associated Press article title “Study: Alcohol more lethal than heroin, cocaine” succeeded in getting me to click through to the article. When I did, I wasn’t surprised to learn that the study in question didn’t actually find alcohol to be more lethal than heroin. What it concluded was that alcohol is the most harmful […]
New Solutions: The Drawing Board is a monthly feature produced by the journal New Solutions. Read more about it here. By Madeline Kangsen Scammell The following poem was written by Genevieve K. Howe, MPH, a former student and colleague of Professor Richard W. Clapp, DSc, MPH, to honor him upon his retirement from the faculty […]
If you’re working on a major global problem like poverty, it’s important to have goals to work towards. Back in 2000, world leaders came together and adopted the United Nations Millennium Declaration, which commits to reducing extreme poverty and sets out a series of goals to be reached by 2015. Each of the eight Millennium […]
When I first started to get interested in public health several years ago, I thought of it mostly as dealing with things like vaccines and handwashing. From one of my friends who enrolled in a Master of Public Health program, I learned that it actually covers a whole range of issues that affect the population’s […]
New Solutions: The Drawing Board is a monthly feature produced by the journal New Solutions. Read more about it here. By Anne Fischel and Lin Nelson We write to you as teachers and researchers concerned about the environmental and occupational health hazards impacting communities living and working in mining sites across North America and the […]
The Iowa-based company Wright County Egg is recalling 380 million eggs, which were sold to distributors and wholesalers in 22 states and Mexico, due to concerns about salmonella contamination. The eggs have been sold under several different brand names, so if you’ve got eggs in your fridge you can check FDA’s page for info. Salmonella-infected […]
New Solutions: The Drawing Board is a monthly feature produced by the journal New Solutions. Read more about it here. By Alice Shabecoff As the massive oil slicks from the BP disaster continue to advance upon shores and communities, worries over the effects on wildlife and the natural environment abound, and rightfully so: hailed as […]