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Globalized Food and Pharma: The South Bites Back in Lina Meruane’s Fruta podrida

JÖRGENSEN, Beth E
2019

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One common denominator of the novels and short stories by Lina Meruane (Chile, b. 1970) is the unconventional representation of illness and disability, and a critique of the connections between illness or disability, medicine and globalization. In this paper, I examine her novel Fruta podrida (2007) (rotten fruit) and the challenge it poses to the globalization of food production and pharmacological research as they affect people living in the Global South. This critique is realized obliquely and disturbingly from three distinct subject positions: a Chilean chemist who works for a fruit company in Chile; her half-sister who has diabetes; and a nurse in a New York City hospital. The linguistic and structural complexity of the narrative discourse demands an engagement with the text that places a further demand on its readers to engage with the inequalities and abuses created under globalization.

 

Disability & the Global South (DGS), 2019, Vol. 6 No. 1

Testing treatments : better research for better healthcare

EVANS, Imogen
THORNTON, Hazel
CHALMERS, Iain
2010

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This book highlights issues that are fundamental to ensuring that research into the effects of treatments is soundly based and designed to answer questions that matter to patients and the health professionals to whom they turn for help in critically assessing treatment options

Drug promotion : what we know, what we have yet to learn

NORRIS, Pauline
et al
2005

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This is a literature review on drug promotion, summarising current research findings on: professional and lay people's attitudes toward drug promotion; impact of pharmaceutical promotion on attitudes and knowledge; impact of pharmaceutical promotion on behaviour; and interventions carried out to counter promotional activities. The review suggests that promotion affects attitudes and behaviour. However evidence is patchy and more research is needed to verify the relationship between drug promotion and behaviour change

PLACE in Central Asia : a regional strategy to focus AIDS prevention in Almaty and Karaganda, Kazakhstan; Osh, Kyrgyzstan; Tashkent, Uzbekistan. 2002

MEASURE EVALUATION
July 2004

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The PLACE method is designed to expose sexual and injection drug use networks, identify sites where high-risk populations overlap and help focus interventions where they are most needed. This report presents both a baseline assessment of HIV/AIDS risks and an evaluation of condom promotion programmes in four cities in Central Asia. The report shows that sexual and drug use networks are extensive and diffuse. The rate of new partnership formation is also very high, and the use of condoms with new partners is "quite high". Injection drug use is common, and needles are often shared. The report calls for programmes and interventions to concentrate their efforts on sites at high risk, where there is an overlap of high-risk populations (people meeting new partners, youth, injection drug users, sex workers)

Spatial patterns of leprosy in an urban area of central Brazil

MARTELLI, C M T
et al
1995

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Reported is the spatial variation of leprosy in an urban area of Brazil and its correlation with socioeconomic indicators. From November 1991 to October 1992 a total of 752 newly diagnosed leprosy patients who were attending all outpatient clinics in Golania city, central Brazil, were indentified. A database of leprosy cases was set up linking patients' addresses to 64 urban districts. Leprosy cases were detected in 86 of the districts and three risk strata were identified. The highest risk area for leprosy was in the outskirts of the city and detection rates increased on moving from more developed to poorer areas. The risk of detecting leprosy cases was 5.3-fold greater (95CL: 3.8-7.4) in the outskirst of the town than in the central zone.
Discussed are the methodological issues related to leprosy case ascertainment, completeness and reliability of information, and the interpretation of the spatial distribution of leprosy per unti area. High lighted also are the lack of deprosy control activities in primary health care units and the usefulness of geographical analysis in planning health services.

Epidemiological evidence from Zaire for a dietary aetiology of konzo, an upper motor neuron disease

TYELLESKAR, T
et al
1991

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A clear association between seasonal outbreaks of a paralytic disease called konzo and toxic effects from consumption of insufficiently processed bitter cassava roots has been demonstrated in Bandundu region, Zaire. A community-based survey of 6764 inhabitants identified 110 live and 254 dead konzo-affected persons with a history of isolated non-progressive spastic paraparesis of abrupt onset. The start of these annual outbreaks of konzo in 1974 coincided with the completion of a new tarmac road to the capital, which facilitated the transport of cassava and made it the main cash crop. The extensive cassava sales encouraged the consumption by the peasant families of roots that had not been adequately processed; frequent acute cyanide intoxications resulted when the naturally occurring cyanogens in the roots were eaten. The disease mainly appeared in the dry season when there was high consumption of insufficiently processed cassava and the diet lacked supplementary foods with sulfur-containing amino acids which promote cyanide detoxification. These results, which confirm the earlier findings in East Africa, show that, owing to the high cyanide and low sulfur dietary intake, there is an increased risk of konzo outbreaks in cassava-growing areas during periods of adverse agro-economic changes

Global health observatory (GHO)

WORLD HEALTH ORGANIZATION (WHO)

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The Global Health Observatory (GHO) provides access to WHO's global health-related statistics. The aim of the GHO is to: compile and verify major sources of health data; provide easy access to country data and metadata; present scientifically sound information in user-friendly formats. Specific areas are provided for theme pages, a data repository, reports, country statistics, a map gallery and standards

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