Silflay Hraka

aka Black Fever, Kala Azar

Development News from Afghanistan
The 10 year old Afghan girl has big eyes, a shy smile, and a dark lesion speckled with blood on her right cheek. The girl has leishmaniasis, a disease caused by a parasite transmitted by a tiny sandfly that can lead to severe scarring, often on the face. The girl, wearing a purple tunic, trousers, and pale blue shoes, answers “no” softly when asked if the sore hurts. But her father is worried about the lesion, the size of a big coin.

“Of course, this doesn’t look good,” the father said, at a leishmaniasis clinic crowded with children with sores in the Afghan capital, Kabul. [The man] said he first noticed a mark on his daughter’s face 2 months ago. “It was a very small dot but it grew and grew. If it grows any more it will cover her whole face.”

Body Snatchers

ProMedMail
A survey in 2003 by HealthNet International in Faizabad, Badakshan province, Afghanistan, found that 8.3 per cent of the surveyed people had cutaneous leishmaniasis lesions. The last WHO (World Health Organization) update on the situation, from 22 May 2002, estimated that there were 200,000 cases in Kabul alone, but it may well have deteriorated since then.

WHO
Although cutaneous leishmaniasis can be traced back many hundreds of years, one of the first and most important clinical descriptions was made in 1756 by Alexander Russell following an examination of a Turkish patient. The disease, then commonly known as “Aleppo boil”, was described in terms which are relevant: “After it is cicatrised, it leaves an ugly scar, which remains through life, and for many months has a livid colour. When they are not irritated, they seldom give much pain.”
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The leishmaniases are caused by 20 species pathogenic for humans belonging to the genus Leishmania, a protozoa transmitted by the bite of a tiny 2 to 3 millimetre-long insect vector, the phlebotomine sandfly.
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Leishmaniasis currently threatens 350 million men, women and children in 88 countries around the world. The leishmaniases are parasitic diseases with a wide range of clinical symptoms: cutaneous, mucocutaneous and visceral.

En Espanol

Jeff Jacoby, Town Hall
As Time magazine noted, Muller’s chemical “kills the mosquitoes that carry malaria, the flies that carry cholera, the lice that carry typhus, the fleas that carry the plague, the sand flies that carry kalaazar and other tropical disease.” Thanks to his discovery, “the tropics are becoming safer places to live; because of it, typhus” — a deadly scourge long associated with wars and disaster — “was no serious threat in World War II.”

The name of this miracle formula? Dichlorodiphenyltrichloroethane — better known as DDT.

Adirondack Musing - Leishmaniasis in U.S. Soldiers

Extraordinary Ordinary Women
The Institute for OneWorld Health is about to submit documents for approval for its first drug, an antibiotic that can cure visceral leishmaniasis more effectively and for a fraction of the cost of existing drugs. Now Hale and her team are turning their attention to drugs and vaccines to fight other diseases, including malaria and childhood diarrheal diseases.”

Sharing Witness

Hale went into greater detail about their first victory, the effort to eradicate visceral leishmaniasis (VL). “It is curable, but you probably haven’t heard much about it because those who get it are very poor and very rural. It kills – who knows how many. And the disease is from a single cell parasite that you get from the bite of a sand fly. The parasite goes to the spleen and the liver and then it goes to the bone marrow. Parasites are brilliant. This one knocks out the ability to make white blood cells and red blood cells. Bihar is the center of the epidemic, with one half of the world’s VL located right there. The opportunity exists to eliminate the disease if we have the will. It doesn’t get much easier than this to eliminate a disease.”

“Our first success was with paromomycin,” Hale continued, “which costs about $10 for a 21-day therapy and gives you a lifetime cure. It gave us proof of concept as a nonprofit pharmaceutical. But drug approval is not enough. You have to get it to people. That’s how you save lives. We were warned by everyone not to do distribution. We had to turn on its head the notion that advanced technology is not for everyone, that it is only for is in the west. You must always turn complexity on its head and make it simple by looking at it another way.”

Victoria Hale
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Institute For One World Health: How to Donate

Planning on profiting from global warming: First Welsh olive grove planted on Anglesey

The grove, believed to be the most northerly in Europe, aims to reap the benefits of our milder winters and the Mediterranean- style mini heat-waves that are now a feature of summers.

The idea for the Welsh project came from Geraint Hughes, 28, a farmer’s son and Calon Lân’s director, who saw the potential of diversifying into growing “the first pure Welsh olives”.

I’m looking forward to the soon to be famous Maine oranges, myself.

I have questions.

A dead 10-foot hammerhead shark involved in a strenuous late-night battle with a surf-casting fisherman washed ashore at Howard E. Futch Beach Park on Monday morning, yards from the Crowne Plaza Hotel.
…
Witnesses told police that some men fishing Sunday night caught the shark on a rod and reel. When they realized what they had, they cut the line, Freeman said. They waded the shark back out to open water and tried to revive it by washing water over its gills, he said.

Specifically, what kind of line is strong enough to allow a person to fight and land a 10 foot hammerhead shark, yet can still be cut?

Behold the power of Kehaar. I make a passing remark about Bigwig not posting to this blog very often and then link to one or two of his past posts and he’s been on some kind of super-blogging high ever since. The dam has burst and the blog posts flow forth.

He’ll probably stop again now that I’ve mentioned it. Behold the power of Kehaar.

Don’t make me come after you next.

And just to reiterate the only other blog posting I’ve made this week: Spiderman 3 sucks donkey balls.

On with the Carnival!

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We’ll start this week with Good Friend of Hraka (GFOH) CGHill. CGHill thinks little of the power of Kehaar but does admire the power of a little metal strip. I have to say that the first thing I look for on a woman these days…well, the second thing I…the thir…the fourth fifth thing I look for on a woman these days is the wedding ring. I have been guilty of treating her differently than I would if she weren’t wearing it. I also treat women differently after I see them smoking. One is out of respect, the other from fading interest.

Andrew Ian Dodge gives his thoughts on Wikipedia in Wiki thoughts. I know that there are problems with it, but there are days when I just go and surf and read articles about stuff that interests me. Is good.

Madeleine Begun Kane is Keeping Abreast Of Bras. Mmmmmm. Booooobies.

Wayne Hurlbert presents Solving business problems: Seeking patterns.

GrrlScientist gives us a really interesting article on the Song and Plumage Evolution in New World Orioles. Evidently bird song is much closer than expected and plumage much less similar in closely related species. At least, that’s what I think the article says. Go read it if you want.

Leon Gettler talks about the problems of stealth homosexuality in corporate America in Lord Browne and the “pink plateau”.

Adam gives us The future of film. I’ve thought about this before. I think I’m going to start my own online production company. I’m serious this time though. Really.

Lastly, Riversider presents Another Preston Is Possible: Mayday, Preston Flagmarket 2007.

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And that’s all folks. You want more of this? Send me your posts via Blog Carnival by next Tuesday evening. This Carny appears in this space on Wednesdays. Next week is world-record-setting Carnival of the Vanities #243.

Until then, read more of Bigwig’s stuff.

The Devil’s Excrement

Thus, there is no rational reason to propose the nationalization of the banking system, other than the goal of controlling and obtaining even more power. In fact, the banking system has been nationalized already in the sense that financial institutions are overtly dependant on the State, with over five times their equity invested in Government paper that could one day become worthless.

Perhaps that is the reason why we have reached the level of absurdity and Government control we have reached in Venezuela, there are too many cowards among us. Yes, I understand why there is fear, self-censorship and silence in the face of a powerful autocrat and Government that not only controls everything but also can squash you at will. But in the end, if there were nobody left to stand, to speak out in defense of our rights, we will end up not having rights at all anyway.

Welcome to the basket-case.

“Whatever we can produce we should do ourselves,” the president likes to say. “Even if what we produce is not as good, and more costly.” His rationale goes something like this: The global economic system is a Jewish-Crusader conspiracy to keep Muslim nations in a position of weakness and dependency. Thus, Muslims would do better by relying on their own resources even if that means lower living standards.

Wouldn’t reducing foreign trade be pretty much the centerpiece of any “Jewish-Crusader conspiracy to keep Muslim nations in a position of weakness and dependency?” Since Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is doing just that, shouldn’t it be obvious that he’s the primary tool of said conspiracy?

No wonder the West isn’t that exercised about the prospect of Iranian nukes! All is proceeding according to plan.

Me want shorter news!

So for casual consumers of news, even the daily summation placed on the doorstep is too much; they want 14 words beamed to the palm of their hand, glanced at when the highway traffic slows.

Actually, I’d prefer that the headlines be projected directly onto the windshield, perhaps by means of lasers, so that I could read the day’s stories without having to glance down at the cell phone.

For I am all about the safety.

Le deluge.

The French middle class, Mr. Chauvel sums up, is haunted by “a sense of impending doom.” Salaries have not kept pace since the 1980s; meritocracy no longer seems to work as a vehicle of social promotion; unemployment is climbing, devastating the lives of people already deprived of a functioning family; property has become unaffordable unless one inherits; prospects of a secure retirement grow dimmer every year. The parents of today’s middle class, Mr. Chauvel writes, “dramatically improved their own standards of living,” but the children “know they will not enjoy a similar fate. In fact they fear they will be downgraded to an impoverished condition.”

Finally, as if all this were not bad enough, there is crime. Until the 1960s, France was largely a safe country: people like my parents would slip their keys under the doormat or just leave the door unlocked. It is now an extremely unsafe country, rife with violent assault, arson, armed robbery and murder, often savage. According to the Institute of National Statistics, the overall crime rate–the ratio of reported criminal activity to population–grew from 12% in 1960, to over 60% in 1980, to about 70% in 2000. The rise may be related to all sorts of circumstances, including economic ones. But it is incontrovertibly related to immigration. According to police sources, over 60% of the criminals and over 90% of the crime bosses operating on French soil are either foreigners, immigrants or the children of immigrants.

What does this mean, I wonder?

According to an index compiled by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, the average number of hours “effectively” devoted to work is only 617 yearly for France, as against 801 in Britain and 865 in the United States.

865/52 =16.6

Is that the average number of hours spent on work per week in the US? Seems a tad low.

Rockfish Muddle

Since hog killings took place in December, muddle may have been a way to combine the new fish with the leftover pork. Muddle continued its heyday through the 1940s and ‘50s, during which time the rockfish population was still strong.

“One of the stories we were hearing is you could literally go down to the river with nets and scoop them out,” he said.
…
Take two medium sized fish, cut up and add 1-2 lb. of side meat, cut into thin slices and fried. Put into a kettle and cover with water. Add a piece of butter the size of an egg, several chopped onions, a sprig of chopped parsley, salt and pepper, and 3 pods of red pepper. Stir constantly to keep from burning. Cook until almost dry.