Sunday, February 19, 2012

Social Epidemic / Anddy Sierra Alvarez

Social Epidemic / Anddy Sierra Alvarez
Anddy Sierra Alvarez, Translator: Unstated

The surge was inevitable, an outbreak of the Aedes Aegipty mosquito in
the crowded capitol neighborhood of El Cerro, where one could say
there's a quarantine for lack of control of this deadly epidemic.

One wonders how, in spite of having the birthrate of a first world
country with a "quality" public health system with experts, Master's,
PhDs, there could be an aggravated situation with such dangerous
ramifications as this disease — Dengue Fever — transmitted by the same
mosquito that spreads Yellow Fever from infected human to healthy human.

The answer is multiple reasons:
- It may be through ignorance of the citizen.
- It may be because of poor vector control because of the poor
organization of sanitation at the regional, municipal and provincial levels.
- It may be the poor hygiene of public places like streets with pipe and
sewer leaks or the waste of the population.
- It may be projects that get started and then get forgotten and in the
end the entities leave everything as they found it upon arrival.

In the end everything is related, and we can throw the blame on the
citizen, undertake television campaigns telling people what they have to
do to keep the mosquito larvae from breeding.

And where does that leave those who set the example and then demand that
from others?

Well if they demand people do this and not some other thing, what's the
role of the government in keeping things clean, dealing with the leaks
in the pipes and the sewers, the accumulation of public waste. And then
sometimes sending the local delegate to get the community started on the
so-called "piece-of-junk plan" (which is really the "do-it-yourself
plan"), which sometimes takes months and in desolate places even years,
in the meantime making it a great place for larvae hatcheries.

What happens is that the people see what's going on, the filthiness of
the streets, the abandonment of the city on the part of the government,
which makes people give up on controlling the epidemic if, in the end,
whatever they do is in vain because the most guilty, and the greatest
hatchery creators are them, the leaders.

January 16 2012

http://translatingcuba.com/?p=15351

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