I watched the video about Ethiopia for today, and it reminded me a lot of what we discussed in week 5 concerning global hunger. There is such a desperate need for people in developing countries to be trained in how to properly farm their lands so that they do not overuse it and destroy its fertility. If organizations and governments could recognize and take aggressive actions to address these land issues and realize that addressing these issues could help to alleviate many of the other problems that develop as a result of them, then I think that a huge step forward could be made. I also thought the video called UNDP HDR Water and Environment was interesting. The main recommendations of getting the government to make sincere policy change, however, didn't really seem realistic. The policy changes concerning sanitation and water in Western Europe and the US that were so effective in lowering the child mortality rates in recent history were instituted by governments that cared about the social welfare of its people because it was the people who were running the governments. In a lot of these African countries, there is so much corruption and so little power for the people to have any say in policy that these reforms are just not going to happen unless the international community puts more pressure on the governments to do something about it.

Interesting ariticle in Newsweek about men and depression in the US

I just read an interesting article in Newsweek titled "Men & Depression: Facing Darkness." I was really surprised to learn about some of the new therapies the NIMH is developing to treat depression. The article explained that the focus for treating depression was shifting in their research from boosting neurotransmitters (which is what antidepressants such as the SSRI's like Zoloft and Prozac do) to focusing instead on the endocrine system. They believe that perhaps if they can block overproduction of stress chemicals they can reduce damage to healthy nerve cells. I think that this is really interesting, because for so long researchers have been focusing on the brain and its neurotransmitters, and now they seem to be looking at depression more holistically and realizing that hormones (particularly stress hormones) most likely play an important role in the development of this disorder. Furthermore, they are trying to find fast-acting antidepressants that would relieve depression symptoms in a matter of hours, instead of weeks like the older antidepressants. They have tested one of these drugs named ketamine, which is apparently an animal tranquilizer, and so far in tests it has been shown to have both short and long-term effectiveness. It will be interesting to see if they can actually develop these extremely fast acting antidepressants. I think that though psychopharmacology is an extremely important part of treatment for depression, it is important no to lose sight that cognitive therapy is just as important. The article made an important point when it pointed out that antidepressant treatment is still more of an art then a science, and people can't expect drugs to always work exactly how they want them too, which is why cognitive therapy is such an integral part in treating depression.

Week 5: Nutrition, Food Security and Global Health

I remember in college I became extremely frustrated when I asked people why there had not yet been a solution to people starving in the world (individuals who I thought might have intelligent insight into the problem), and many of the responses I would get would be that it was not our problem. Complete apathy, which just baffled me. Many of them felt that the problem was too big and that it was too far displaced from America for it to really be something that we as a country should be focused on solving. I feel that one quote given in this lecture really articulated my frustration with the fact that in a world that is as technologically rich as it is, there are still people dying of hunger. It stated: "When I give food to the poor, they call me a saint. When I ask why the poor have no food, they call me a communist (Dom Helder Camara, Archbishop of Recife, Brazil)." I think that Dr. Shahi made a good point when he asked "if undernutrition is an underlying cause of 53% of deaths among children under five years of age, why are we not focusing on this issue." We know which parts of the world are affected most by hunger, so we need to focus our resources on eliminating this problem. The fact that women's education and status can play such a huge role in reducing child malnutrition is something that the WHO and other organizations need to focus more on. I think that perhaps these public health organizations should try to gain support from internationally famous people, such as Oprah, to help champion this cause (as someone in class pointed out, didn't Oprah just open schools for women in Africa recently?). One can look to the awareness of the global problem of AIDS that has been generated in the past decade and the fact that it has a lot to do with famous people taking an interest to convince the public of its importance. Hunger, like so many of the other issues we have discussed in class, is completely preventable. It is just an issue of coming up with an innovative solution and convincing the people who have the resources to do something about it that this issue is worth their time. I think one interesting solution Dr. Shahi proposed in class was to make it possible for farmers in developing countries to have web-based access to directly sell their produce to buyers, rather then losing most or all of the profit to the dealers in between. I also found the presentation about Ready-to-Use Therapeutic Food a really interesting, and in my opinion good, solution. I think that any step towards preventing hunger is a good one, regardless of whether it is only temporary or not.