Post-Schna-ulations

In other news...

As today is Scott's (link) birthday, I thought I would find out some fun trivia as to what else happened on August 13th, 1979. Appropriately enough, the first two things I found were baseball related, so here you go:
Lou Brock, is 14th to get 3,000 hits (sadly in a cardinals win over the cubs) link
Corey Patterson was born (you're in good company). link
Other people born on August 13th include Fidel Castro (1926) and Alfred Hitchcock (1899). link
So, Happy 25th Birthday Scott.

One of my favorite composers is Shostakovich, so I thought it appropriate to post this article from today's NY Times regarding the life and music of Shostakovich (in light of the upcoming Bard Festival). An excerpt:

A significant factor in the Shostakovich boom, at least in the West, was the 1979 publication of the book "Testimony," billed as "The Memoirs of Dmitri Shostakovich as related to and edited by Solomon Volkov." It portrayed Shostakovich as a tortured dissident, forced to comply at least outwardly with the dictates of Stalin's regime and its successors but maintaining an inner distance and imparting secret truths in his music. In the lingering cold-war atmosphere, Shostakovich emerged from "Testimony" as a deeply sympathetic if not exactly warm and cuddly figure.

In the continuing (disheartening) news concerning the AIDS situation around the world, the following article was published in today's Times:
Africa's Health-Care Brain Drain
While this article, unlike post of the news that has come out lately, doesn't concern the US blocking imports of generic drugs so that people in poorer countries can afford treatment, it does once again paint the US (and other wealthy countries) in a negative light (and rightfully so). In general, the article discusses the emigration of doctors and nurses OUT of African countries and to countries like the US and England (not surprisingly, this is because these wealthier countries RECRUIT doctors and nurses who are willing to take lower wages in return for the work).

...the world's poorest countries are providing enormous quantities of medical aid to the richest. The United Nations estimates that every time Malawi educates a doctor who practices in Britain, it saves Britain $184,000.

It's understandable why overseas work is attractive. AIDS and tuberculosis have stretched African health services to the breaking point, placing impossible demands on nurses in particular. They do their jobs without adequate equipment or drugs. Their paychecks sometimes arrive months late. They risk infection - in some places, even gloves are scarce. While rich countries average 222 doctors per 100,000 people, Uganda has fewer than 6. Malawi has 17 nurses for every 100,000 citizens; many rich countries have more than 1,000.

The obvious long-term solution to the medical brain drain is for wealthier countries to reimburse Africa's health and educational systems for the cost of poaching their professionals, and to greatly increase the financing and technical help for Africa's health systems - in their entirety, not just the clinics that deal with AIDS.
The concern over AIDS, paradoxically, has created an opportunity by focusing world attention on Africa's miserable health care. Improving it would cost very little money, relatively speaking, and end the exodus of doctors and nurses that is exacerbating the epidemic's devastation

Too bad that would cost the wealthy countries too much money. Billions of dollars to fight a war supposedly based on "liberating people" or on stopping a country from having weapons that could kill millions of people (COULD being the key word here), and yet we won't spend what I'm sure would be far less than what it's cost for this war to help treat a disease that IS killing millions of people. No, no...everyone in Africa should just STOP HAVING SEX, and then they wouldn't GET sick in the first place. That's the solution, right the Jaggerbush? Fucking brilliant.

posted by Schna @ 8:22 AM