Likewise, according to Bristol and Donnelly, global health journalism struggles to report the social and political issues of the world because of a lack of interest in readers.  While the mass population may watch a report on the tragedies of global issues, they often turn the TV off once the reporters attempt to explain the underlying causes.  There is a lack of interest in the intricate political issues and thus journalists tend to naturalize disasters.  They often discuss world health issues on a purely surface level in order to please readers.  For example, a news reporter may discuss the statistics and tragedy of diarrheal disease, but never address the underlying governmental and social causes for the prevalence of the disease in a specific region. Perhaps if journalists told the whole truth, the public would be more aware and therefore more powerful against the social injustices that enslave the globe.

http://www.kff.org/globalhealth/upload/8135.pdf

In her piece When Wounds and Corpses Fail to Speak: Narratives of Violence and Rape in Congo (DRC), Ngwarsungu Chiwengo dissects the inadequacies of human rights discourses at conveying suffering.  She uses the Congolese genocide as a case study of how the international community pushed pain “further into invisibility.” Chiwengo explains how the west’s post-colonial constructions of Africa are transmitted through the language used to communicate suffering or violence.

This language has effectively muted the voices and erased narratives of individual Africans peoples because it “supports a particular conception of rights and acts to mask power relations and stifles the possibility of engaging critiques.”  Further, international acknowledgement and discussion of human rights abuses is marked by the residue of western imperialism, so the representation of African events in western literature, media, and human rights discourse are limited by the underlying power relations between the two regions. “Colonization, religion, and European contact have led to the construction of an African identity of alterity.”  Thus, even when the international community acknowledge and discuss human rights atrocities committed in Africa, colonial constructions of African identity permeate those discussions—further broadening the “veil of silence” covering the dead.

The global health crises caused by diarrheal disease also represent a salient example of the suffering of some is silenced by those in power, who control the language used to express pain and decide whose plights will be spoken of and whose will be overlooked.  The silence surrounding diarrheal disease reflects the colonial notion that “human life in Africa isn’t worth the same as man’s life any where is.”  One article about diarrheal disease calls the completely preventable disease “The Silent Killer” of children worldwide; silent because its victims—who suffer no political agency and extreme poverty—have no voice on the global stage.  It is time to give these children a voice.

Here is a still image from a video campaign created by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) that encourages people to speak-out against violence instead of succumbing to the silence that propagates it worldwide.

As defeatdd.org states “even though we have the knowledge and solutions in and to defeat diarrheal disease, the issue can be difficult, even taboo subject to discuss.” Unlike other diseases that may be a long way away from finding the cure, doctors have the resources to defeat diarrheal disease. There are relatively inexpensive and available medicine that cures children that are dehydrated from diarrheal disease. However, for many reasons people are not using the medicine that is available. One possible reason for this could be the stigma that diarrheal disease carries. In a lot of communities, diarrheal disease is an indication of poverty and poor hygiene. Often victims of cholera are viewed as social outcasts and rejected from their communities. There are many other factors, but bottom line, diarrheal disease carries a certain stigma that causes it to be less publicized both in Western media and less verbalized in the communities themselves.

http://www.defeatdd.org/take-action

Many people choose to act as if the continent of Africa did not exist, and it would seem that to many, that would be preferable. The way Africa is talked about in many cases is that it is a barbaric area of the world beyond help. It’s the equivalent of walking passed a homeless man on the street and feeling the tug of your conscience as you walk by. People don’t like to remember that there is an entire continent struggling to survive. Internet memes like “White People Problems” or “First-World Problems” make fun of how seriously many people in the developed world take their menial problems, and while those phrases are thrown around in jest, I believe them to be somewhat sobering to people who would sooner forget their African counterparts.

Chiwengo’s article describes much of Africa’s problems regarding being left-behind in the rest of the world’s radar. There are those issues that interest the global public, and those that don’t. Some issues make people more uncomfortable than they’d like (mass rape, torture, diarrheal disease), and those issues that people find just upsetting enough without going too far down the rabbit hole of the world’s terrors (child soldiers in Uganda, clean water).

I believe that getting involved, no matter what level of injustice, is a positive for development. However, the aid people around the world receive should not be based upon our comfort zones.

 “Imagination and the will to carry it out are core features of survival” (Nordstrom 1998). Since the beginning of humanity, imagination has been the secret ingredient to human survival.  When humans were attacked by wild beasts, they imagined tools to fight back.  When they were cold, they imagined a way to create warmth. When they were faced with storms they imagined a way to build shelter. They imagined cities, social interaction, writing, ways of interacting.  Creativity and innovation sets human kind apart from other animals.  People create their vision of self, and grow into it. They create habits, culture, and ways of living.  People author their own place in society.  With out imagination, humans are left to the direction of someone else. 

            What terror war attacks is people’s ability to imagine and to create.  Separated from imagination, people cannot create and thus are subject to someone else’s imagination- be they good or evil.  Imagination empowers man because he can create a method to fight back.  Terrorists thus seek to destroy this imagination. Because the people in Mozambican are able to imagine a different situation, they are able to fight the terrorist war.

             The problem is that imagination is spurred on by examples.  When people see an example of the way they want to live, and to be, they can imagine themselves in that life.  In a barren, scattered, diseased, shattered world- as terror violence seeks to create- there is no vision of change. 

            Just as imagination is monumental in fighting terrorism, so is imagination key to fighting diarrheal disease in developing countries.  If people can imagine a new lifestyle, they can create a new lifestyle.  If they can imagine solutions to their situation, they can actualize those imaginations.  For example in the South African slums, if people were able to imagine a new lifestyle- one that is clean, where hygiene takes priority, and rehydration pills were taken and used, long term elimination of diarrheal would occur.  The problem is that people are often hopeless and can’t imagine nothing better for themselves.  They settle into the lifestyle that was taught to them, with no hope for change.  Inspiration and teaching communities to imagine and create new lifestyles could be huge in dismantling poverty and diseases.     

http://alternativeapproaches.com/magick/image/image.htm

In Carolyn Nordstrom’s article for Medical Anthropology Quarterly she includes a description of war from a young woman in Mozambique. Movingly, she details the way in which war has fused itself with the blood and tissue of each person it touches. It gives the impression that she, as the others of her country, is in a paradox in which she is completely separate from the war that determines her life, and inextricably linked to it. The war affects her daily life, but it is not about her. She has no control, only fear.

She describes the precariousness of her daily life. Will she be a victim as she collects the water from a nearby source? Will her children be yet more sacrifices of the war? Is it paranoia or alertness that has her hurrying passed the shadows?

War is such a disturbing phenomenon, that to delve into the ways in which it offends would be impossible. There are the popular topics like body counts, acts of torture, after effects (such as those talked about in Hoge et al’s article), but what about the psychological effects on the civilians. Yes, we talk about them in crude terms such as mortality or morbidity, but what of mental morbidity caused from being paralyzed by the atrocities of war? Imagine a society of people who must function in sustainable ways for survival amidst devilish threats. Women in some areas of war-stricken Africa are tortured, raped, or killed. Children are treated similarly or kidnapped and enslaved as child soldiers. I once read an article for another class in which a school full of children was burned down. The survivors were given the choice of being executed or joining the ranks of the army. If they chose life, they were forced to rape members of their community, at times the elderly, so that the children would not be able to return home for fear of retribution.

This is a life in which we from the developed world will never understand. However, it is the grotesque reality for many stricken with political violence. It is also important to note that societies where fear saturates the air and violence permeates daily life, development cannot be possible. How can people flourish and come anywhere near their potential when they must rush from place to place, with elevated heartbeats, just praying to make it home?

Similarly, how are people terrified of preventable diseases expected to remain productive? Mothers all over the world live with fear that their children will not make it passed infancy because of preventable causes. They know that the water in which their children are drinking could very well kill them, but also know, they will die without it. If a child does get sick, a mother may have to decide between feeding the rest of her family and saving the child. There are innumerable risks, fears, and horror stories circulating around the developing areas of the world, and I believe those constant feelings of terror are crippling any possibility of growth.

http://www.unicef.org/jamaica/Child_Poverty_and_Disparity_in_Jamaica.pdf

In Zlolniski’s piece, Water Flowing North of the Border, we are shown the way in which the people of Mexico are sacrificed for the profits to be made in the US. Water is being exported in crops (and on its own, apparently) at a rate much greater than is being replenished by rainfall. When it comes down to where the money is directed, the citizens vs the American buyers, the priority is not domestic.

While this is tragic, it is not an uncommon occurrence. Struggling states are constantly putting the foreign buyer over the needs of their citizens. When jobs are outsourced to the developing world there is a tension between the investor’s desire for maximizing profit and the country’s need to maintain minimal standards for the employees. In the case of the haves versus the have nots, the employees rarely come out on top. The state must weigh the need for basic working conditions with the fear of losing the FDI to another country willing to let their people suffer in return for invested capital. In areas with great need, foreign companies wield their power in a race to the bottom.

In the case of infrastructure and human needs, like water, the sacrifice of the local people has detrimental effects. For instance, if clean water cannot reach a segment of the population, whether through faulty infrastructure or lack of resources, major health risks may occur. People MUST drink water, and because of this, they will be forced to drink the closest thing to it in a crisis. If the closest water supply for many miles is a stagnant source, it will have to do. This is how many people in the developing world succumb to diarrheal diseases. Access to clean water is one of the most vital resources to life and much of the world is without it.

When states begin sending water to other countries in the form of exports over providing what is needed to their own people, a great exploitation of the developing world has occurred.

“Often the poorest people are those who receive the worst public services and pay the most for water” (Whiteford 2005).  Because of the failure of the Mexico state government, the residents have inadequate water and the power goes to the private vendors.  This creates a delicate balance of power between private and public water companies, with the residents are at the mercy of both.  In addition to not having enough water, the poorest communities are often given the worst quality water.  To reduce costs, wells without filters are installed and the water that flows into peoples houses are often full of mud.  Cleaning water is time-consuming task that usually falls to the women.  A rag is attached to the faucet and then the water sits in a bucket to allow the mud to sink to the bottom.  The effort, time and money it takes to obtain clean water adds an additional burden to residents who are already struggling to stay alive.  The scarcity of available water increases the gap between the rich and the poor in these countries, putting the control of the water in the hands of a few priveledged.

Water scarcity has detrimental effects on health, especially children’s.  Contaminated water is the root of diarrheal disease which is the second highest causes of death in Mexico. Disease spreads like wildfire in communities that do not have access to adequate, clean water.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15502694

Advertising committees will do just about anything to make a profit, and get away with it.  They will lie, manipulate, entice, pressure, and convince you that you NEED their product to survive.  Often those that are unsuspecting, off guard, desperate for help or uninformed make the easiest targets.  In America, fast food advertisements focus their attention on hungry, unsuspecting teenagers.  Weight programs focus on the those with eating disorders.  A company’s success depends primarily on how well they can convince the public of their need for their product.  The validaty of their claims go unchecked and unquestioned.  They can get away with stretching the truth, no matter how destructive their lies may be. How many people must be trampled under advertisment propaganda before it is considered a crime? How about 15 million babies every year…

Infant formula industries are killing babies in their greed for profit. Despite overwhelming evidence that shows that breast-feeding is healthier and safer for infants than bottled formula, formula industries convince mothers to buy their product.  Advertising campaigns target poorer countries that lack the scientific education that tell them otherwise.  Free formula samples are handed out in hospital wards and by doctors, and misleading product information is given to mothers.  Mothers buy into advertising campaigns that convince them that the best thing for their child is to spend what little resources they have on formula milk. These advertisments kill millions every year according to Werner and Sanders. “In poor countries bottle-feeding is particularly lethal because mothers often dilute the formula to save money and use contaminated water to mix the formula- water that frequently transmits lethal diarrheal illness” (Oneil 2006).  15 million formula fed infants die every year by contracting diarrheal disease that may have been avoiding if their mothers had breast fed them.  When does telling lies become considered criminal? After millions of babies die in the path of the industries’ march toward profit? Understanding the forces behind health disparities is just the first step toward global equality.  Action needs to be taken. 

http://www.bellybelly.com.au/pregnancy/baby-formula

Misleading pamphlets such as this one convince unsuspecting mothers that formula milk is the best source of nutrition for their children: