Eating mud to survive

This kills me. Hungry Haitians are eating mud in an attempt to survive:

With food prices rising, Haiti’s poorest can’t afford even a daily plate of rice, and some take desperate measures to fill their bellies. Charlene, 16 with a 1-month-old son, has come to rely on a traditional Haitian remedy for hunger pangs: cookies made of dried yellow dirt from the country’s central plateau.

The mud has long been prized by pregnant women and children here as an antacid and source of calcium. But in places like Cite Soleil, the oceanside slum where Charlene shares a two-room house with her baby, five siblings and two unemployed parents, cookies made of dirt, salt and vegetable shortening have become a regular meal.

“When my mother does not cook anything, I have to eat them three times a day,” Charlene said. Her baby, named Woodson, lay still across her lap, looking even thinner than the slim 6 pounds 3 ounces he weighed at birth.

Of course it’s probably not a good idea to have 5 kids if you can’t support them, of course it’s probably not a good idea to have a baby when 16 and single, of course there are larger things going on in the economy and government of Haiti that lead to some having much and most having nothing.

But.

It ought to offend every sensibility all of us have that in 2008 people are reduced to eating mud in a attempt to survive. It’s not right. And if we can, we ought to help.

Here’s a few ways we can:

I recommend the last one, Meds and Food for Kids, for a couple of reasons:

January 30, 2008 | Filed Under tags-not-categories | Leave a Comment 

When business is evil …

When the business you’re involved in is evil, you know it’s time to get out and start doing something else. Otherwise you will inevitably become evil as well. There are plenty of examples of that in the US health care system, which Sicko is highlighting right now.

Here’s just one of them …

Palmer still owes more than $7,000 for an eight-hour hospital visit that involved, by his estimate, only about 15 minutes of actual care.

That’s after getting more than $4K reduced for the “trauma activation charge,” which is a page to doctors and nurses that are presumably either already at the hospital or on call.

15 minutes of care? $7000?

His room was $2000. His CT scans were $3500. Sucks to be him, obviously … according to the administrator.

“It’s unfortunate that he’s in the situation he’s in,” Nazeeri-Simmons said. “But what is an individual hospital to do? Are we supposed to eat the costs?”

She know’s it’s wrong … but does she take any personal responsibility?

“It’s not us,” she said. “It’s the whole system, and the system is broken. We need to look closely at making changes and at how we can deliver care in a rational way.”

Rational health care? Here’s a couple of clues:

The United States spent an average of $6,102 per person on health care in 2004 (the latest year for which figures are available), according to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development.

Canada spent $3,165 per person, France $3,159, Australia $3,120 and Britain a mere $2,508. At the same time, life expectancy in the United States was lower than in each of these other countries and infant mortality was higher.

I live in Canada, and the health care system is not always perfect. You usually have to wait … I guess sort of like Palmer.

But though I’ve had multiple broken bones, several car accidents, and various other incidents requiring stitches etc., I’ve never had to fear that an accident or an illness would wipe me out financially.

Spending an average of $6K/person and only actually covering about half of the people? That’s evil. I’m a pretty conservative guy, but there can be no better argument against the free enterprise system than American health care.

Theft, larceny, and even murder: that’s what it is.

July 16, 2007 | Filed Under business2.0, mistakes, personal | Leave a Comment 

I guess that would stop corruption

Whoa. I wonder what this would do to government corruption around the world:

The former head of China’s State Food and Drug Administration, Zheng Xiaoyu, has been executed for corruption, the state-run Xinhua news agency reports.

He was convicted of taking 6.5m yuan ($850,000; £425,400) in bribes and of dereliction of duty at a trial in May.

The bribes were linked to sub-standard medicines, blamed for several deaths.

I’m not condoning it or advocating for it in any way, but on a purely amoral the-ends-justify-the-means level, I bet it would get very good results.

July 10, 2007 | Filed Under personal | Leave a Comment 

Relaxing throughout the workday

Having endured years of chronic neck pain in my life, I know something about the need to intentionally relax your muscles.

I saw a good tip today intended to help prevent near-sightedness, but a major side-benefit (or perhaps the main benefit) is muscle relaxation. I find that I tend to get a little more stressed, hour by hour, at the office, and that results in tensing my muscles, locking up my joints, and making me more likely to have neck or other joint pain.

Here’s the tip:

Poor distance vision is rarely caused by genetics, says Anne Barber, O.D., an optometrist in Tacoma, Washington. “It’s usually caused by nearpoint stress.” In other words, staring at your computer screen for too long. So flex your way to 20/20 vision. Every few hours during the day, close your eyes, tense your body, take a deep breath, and, after a few seconds, release your breath and muscles at the same time. Tightening and releasing muscles such as the biceps and glutes can trick involuntary muscles like
the eyes into relaxing as well.

And here’s the source …

June 18, 2007 | Filed Under personal, work | 1 Comment 

Ephemera


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