Public health practice

Despite these barriers, she has been relentless in finding other ways to serve the women and children of her village. She has been a dedicated a primary school teacher for 27 years and has managed to pursue her interest in medicine independently. In college, she took first aid as an elective and has since been studying health on her own. Her neighbors are well aware of her hobby, and often come to her for basic medical advice. Last year — with the help of Mercy Corps — Faiziniso was finally able to take her passion a step further by becoming a trained Community Health Educator.Our work to build healthy communities, families and individuals is at the heart of Mercy Corps' vision for social change. By partnering with a range of partners, from village health committees to government agencies, we help build the means to improve maternal, newborn and child health, ensure proper nutrition and combat infectious diseases.
Realtor turned restaurantor and a transplant from Pittsburgh, Owner Christine Harman and her staff take great pride in serving the highest quality thin-crust, hand-tossed pizza in Sarasota and Manatee counties.

In their fourth year, Vertori's has grown from a hole-in-the-wall, delivery only pizzeria, to a friendly neighborhood restaurant complete with a generous selection of pastas, parmesan dinners, beer and wines with seating for 35.
In 2008, after a friend was diagnosed with Celiac Disease, Christine introduced a line of gluten-free items including pizza, pasta, parmesan dinners, breads, beer, and desserts. Christine recently launched "Good To Be Gluten-Free" a DBA of Vertoris offering gluten-free baked goods and sells them at the restaurant and at the Downtown Sarasota Farmer's Market every Saturday morning from 7am-noon. Frozen gluten-free entrees are also available to go.
Treating Cataracts in Peru

Currently, CGSGI is focusing on alleviating the burden of cataracts in underserved populations in Peru. While cataracts are generally associated with aging, they also can be caused by pollutants in unsafe drinking water and by a diet lacking in Vitamins A, C, and E – realities faced by millions of impoverished people around the globe. Today, cataracts are the leading cause of blindness in the developing world. Cataracts are highly treatable, though, and the surgeries to correct them are inexpensive and require very limited post-surgery follow-up. Unfortunately, the need for cataract surgeries in the developing world far exceeds supply. In Peru alone, authorities reported 83,000 untreated cataract cases in 2007.

To address this issue, CGSGI, Fundación Carlos Slim, and the Peruvian Ministry of Health have committed to deliver 50,000 additional cataract surgeries over the next four years to the most underserved populations in Peru by supporting the costs and logistics related to the necessary medical equipment, supplies, personnel, and transportation. The goal is to build the country’s capacity to provide these surgeries long into the future, efficiently and at scale. In the near term, the program provides patients with this simple, life-changing medical procedure, significantly improving their quality of life.
The SARS outbreak of 2003 resulted in hundreds of deaths and billions of dollars of economic losses. While officially reported in February 2003, there was Internet evidence of the outbreak as early as November 2002. International awareness of the outbreak at that time could have led to measures that could have limited its global impact.

Every year influenza outbreaks affect tens of thousands of Americans. However, recent analyses have shown that Internet searching for terms related to influenza rise prior to the official recognition of these outbreaks. Preliminary data suggests that the current HINI influenza outbreak may have also been forewarned by increase in influenza specific search terms in Mexico. Acting on these signals could potentially allow for measures to be taken to reduce the spread of the infections and, in particular, protect the most vulnerable to their effect.

Last year a food borne Listeria outbreak in Canada killed 22 individuals. An official announcement of the outbreak was made in August 2008. Our analysis of the search term Listeriosis found that it spiked one month prior to the official announcement, and the rise in searching correlated with the retrospective epidemic curve. If measures had been taken at an earlier time perhaps fewer Canadians may have been exposed to the deadly bacteria.

These examples illustrate the potentially powerful tool of using the Internet to aid in outbreak detection. Internet disease surveillance strategies generally fall into 2 categories. The first strategy involves examining the Internet for reports or professional discussion potentially related to outbreaks. The WHO's Global Public Health Intelligence Network searches news feed aggregators for reports that may provide evidence of a disease outbreak. The International Society for Infectious Disease Program for Monitoring Emerging Diseases (Promed) disseminates public health reports through its membership. HealthMap scans 20,000 news sources every hour to aggregate and disseminate information on emerging diseases. The second strategy, one which is more in its infancy, relies on surveillance of changes in Internet search term patterns. These may be potential harbingers, perhaps our earliest warnings, of an emerging outbreak.

Such Internet-based disease surveillance relies upon the idea that there is a collective intelligence consisting of the combined postings and search activities of millions of individual Internet users. However, while promising there are limitations to these approaches. In particular, there is the problem of how many false warnings may be detected for every true warning. These strategies, therefore, need to be complemented by public health vetting of the reports. An interesting question that arises is how many false messages is it worth investigating to find one true message. Would 99 false investigations be worth early identification and prevention of one SARS outbreak? As these tools are further calibrated we will develop a better understanding of the answers to this question as well as to determining the overall effectiveness of these approaches.

Future activities to improve these instruments will likely focus on engaging health-care and infectious disease professional networks and the public health community at-large in these surveillance efforts. Many of these individuals work in the field and have the ability to provide proper verification and context to the alerts. We also expect these surveillance systems to move to a decentralized, open and freely-accessible approach where anyone can contribute, discuss and verify incoming data feed , akin to a Wikipedia view of ongoing disease outbreaks.

A by-product of the ability to use this information is that it should also promote greater transparency in reporting of public health events within nations' borders. According to the revised International Health Regulations, the WHO has the authority to rely upon these forms of unofficial reports to conduct disease surveillance. Efforts by a state or region to hide these outbreaks, because of economic concerns, is challenging when news reports may be available on the Internet and, in particular, when individual search activity may strongly suggest that there is concern at the ground level about a spreading disease.

Public health practice is increasingly governed by the precautionary principle, which argues that complete information of risk should not preclude activities to mitigate the harm from that risk. At least based on this principle, Internet surveillance should be considered as an adjunct to traditional public health surveillance activities to protect populations from rapidly spreading harms.

Kumanan Wilson is the Canada research chair in public health policy at the Ottawa Hospital Research Institute, University of Ottawa


John Brownstein is an assistant professor Children's Hospital Boston, Harvard Medical School and co-founder of HealthMap.
Helthy potato recipes

Helthy potato recipes
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Golden Potato Bake(Serves 4)
4 - 6 medium potatoes, peeled1/2 cup bran flake cereal2 tbsp. butter, melted1/4 tsp. onion powder1/4 tsp. garlic powder1/2 tsp. sea salt-------------------------
Heat oven to 375 degrees. Crush the cereal into crumbs. Mix crumbs, salt, onion and garlic powder. Brush potatoes with the melted butter and coat with crumbs. Bake uncovered 1 to 1 1/4 hours.

Potato Pancakes
4 medium potatoes, grated1 onion, minced1 egg white, slightly beaten3 tbsp. applesauce, unsweetened1/3 cup whole wheat flour1/4 tsp. nutmeg1 tsp. fruit sugar1/2 tsp. onion powder1/2 tsp. garlic powder1/2 tsp. Bragg's seasoning, or sea salt1 tbsp. canola oil
Add the grated potatoes with all of the ingredients, except the flour. Mix well. Add enough of the flour so that the mixture will stick together. Drop by 1/4 cup into a hot skillet until lightly browned on both sides -
Cubed Moist Potatoes
7 large potatoes, cubed1 onion, chopped1 tbsp. low-salt chicken base1 tsp. garlic powder1 tsp. onion powder1 tsp. Vegit, or low-salt seasoning1 tsp. fruit sugar2 cups peas, frozen2 tbsp. butter1/2 tsp. Bragg's seasoning, or sea salt3 cups water, boiled
Fry the onions and potatoes in the butter until lightly browned. Pour in the hot water and add the seasonings. Simmer until the potatoes are tender. Add the peas during the last 3 minutes of cooking.