TIGblogs - Joya Banerjee's TIGBlog http://jbanerjee.tigblog.org/ What's on the minds of young leaders from around the globe? en-us dead again. http://jbanerjee.tigblog.org/post/953391
They told me that the problem was just moisture inside. Which is not a surprise at all, seeing as how I am damp to the bone- even my bed and towel are wet all the time.

But why the hell did it take them a whole week to diagnose that it was a moisture problem? I should have just trusted my gut and taken apart the laptop myself.

I would do that right now if I had a small screwdriver. And I have no idea where to get one now. I'm going back to Khar this afternoon and I will not leave until they fix this once and for all.

I have been barely productive the past week. I feel useless and I'm wasting my time- I have data from 200 surveys ready to be entered but no stable computer to enter it into.

This really sucks so much.
]]> Wed, 08 Jul 2009 05:07:00 EDT http://jbanerjee.tigblog.org/post/953391 18.975 72.825833318.97572.8258333 Going to Hell http://jbanerjee.tigblog.org/post/953399 One day after work I walked through the throngs of staring men and ladies in burqas to the Bandra train station from the East side where our office is. On the way, I stopped to get some passport photos of myself, because it turns out to get a monthly train pass one needs to submit a photo. (? Another “welcome to India” moment of sheer unnecessary bureaucracy.) Although the price for passport photos was clearly written on the wall of the shop, the guy tried to charge me double. My strategy for such things has become to agree to their price and then, upon exiting, only pay them what I owe them and leave.

The lady getting pictures in the back room (sketchy!) before me was wearing a full burqa, even the thingie over her mouth and nose. I sort of giggled to myself… bc the picture could have been of ANYONE.

It reminded me of a story my uncle told me. His wife, who is Chinese and works for the World Bank, had to go to Iran on a business trip. She went to a store and got her passport photos taken for her visa. But on her way out, the photographer asked her where she was going. When she said Iran, he flipped out and was like “you can’t submit pictures like that!!” They searched all over the shop in vain for something to use as a hijab. The only feasible thing was a bright orange tablecloth. So he took a picture of Aunt Mei gripping the ends of a bright orange table cloth grinning wickedly. The pic now adorns the desk of my uncle at the Bank…. Lol.

Back to my passport pics. I asked him if he could have them ready now, so the guy took a chip out of the camera and put it into the computer. To my horror and utter amusement, he opened up adobe photoshop, blew up my picture 400x and began airbrushing away my blemishes and imperfections!!!!

A firmly negative head waggle NO and “thikh hai” and I was off to the train station.

I somehow found the right train this time, despite the total lack of signs or people to ask, and started searching for the “ladies compartment.” See, they had to make a separate one, like in Mexico City, because women were getting sexually harassed and felt up in the unisex compartment. There are no signs telling you were the ladies compartment on the train will actually stop, so you just have to look for where a big group of ladies are standing.

Given the crazy mad dash for the compartment as soon as it stops and the no-holds-barred fighting, screaming, punching, kicking and tripping others to get a space on the train, I find it terribly ironic that they call it a “ladies” compartment! Such unladylike comportment.

Anyway that day the train rolled up and the ladies compartment was already filled- with men. So the ladies decided to take over the handicap compartment instead.

[Side note, it took us a long while to figure out why there was a picture of a crab on the handicapped compartment. Was crabs so prevalent and infectious there that people with crabs need a separate compartment? Finally we asked Shrutika what was up with the crabs and she said, as if it were obvious, “oh no, that’s for cancer patients.” Umm…. Elucidating, indeed. Adriane eventually figured out that a crab is the star sign for Cancer. Ohhh….]

So. We are all in the tiny handicap compartment. I wondered to myself, isn’t it terribly stigmatizing to put disabled people in a separate compartment? But after watching the mad rush for seats at a few more stops, I decided that if I were disabled I would rather be stigmatized on the train than not have a seat amongst that bustling throng of people in the heat, grime and sweat.

Unfortunately, a few stops in, a disabled man with one leg got on board. He was mighty pissed to see a huge group of ladies taking over. He started screaming at everyone and waving around his cane. The general gist of it was fury that women, who have their own compartment, could be so uncouth to take over the handicapped one too. He was trying to get everyone out of the compartment.

Well Indian ladies know how to give it. One of them got up and started screaming at him back, gesticulating wildly. “If you care so much, here, take my seat and shut up!” But it was the principle that mattered to him, so he continued going around the train, screaming and waving his crutch at each seated lady.

We rolled into the next station, and in the brutality only typical of Bombay trains, two “ladies” together just pushed him out the open door.

................ slightly sheepish amused glances were exchanged between us women on the train.

I guess that’s the food chain. Going to hell!
]]> Mon, 29 Jun 2009 07:06:00 EDT http://jbanerjee.tigblog.org/post/953399 18.975 72.825833318.97572.8258333 The elusive head waggle http://jbanerjee.tigblog.org/post/953401
Is it a yes? Is it a no? We’re not really sure.

When you ask a rickshaw driver if he’ll take you somewhere, most often the reason is no. I’m never sure whether it’s because the destination I’ve requested is simply too far away, there’s crazy traffic that the driver has heard about through his extensive network of SMS rickshaw-driving friends, because he can’t understand my accent, or because he just doesn’t like me.

But. I can’t even understand if it’s a yes, a no, or a “sure, hop in back!” So… I usually just start getting in the back. If they don’t protest, it’s all good. If they do, I usually don’t understand what they’re saying, so just keep saying “Bandra Station?” I’m equally unsure of whether they agree to take me because they’ve finally understood where I want to go, that they are just too exasperated with me to continue protesting, or because they just feel really sorry for me.

But that’s ok, because the elusive headwaggle has proven useful to me too! Because these days I have acclimatized enough to pass as a local, and people will often come up to me and ask me questions. At first they respond to my blank look by repeating the question a few times. But then I begin to feel bad and just waggle my head and smile. God knows how that’s being interpreted! Hopefully they weren’t asking me directions, because I probably pointed them in the opposite direction of where they wanted to go… =)

]]> Sun, 28 Jun 2009 07:06:00 EDT http://jbanerjee.tigblog.org/post/953401 18.975 72.825833318.97572.8258333 http://jbanerjee.tigblog.org/post/953403
Monsoons have started! First and probably last time I've been waiting with anticipation for the rains to come. I'm feeling really bad for the ladies in burqas. There are tons and tons of them in many diverse neighborhoods I've been in, easily as many as I saw in Pakistan. Has that always been the case and I just never noticed? Or is it something new? I can't imagine being in that horrid black synthetic fabric covered head to toe in this type of heat. And when it starts flooding, they will just soak up all the nasty water, chromatography style. It must get so steamy in there... wow. Like edamame in a pod.

Yesterday we were driving back to Bandra from a meeting at the Tata Institute of Social Sciences and took the route by the sea. We saw the Bandra-Worli sea pass under construction and I fervently wished that it would be completed soon, since that would make my commute (starting tomorrow when I move to South Bombay) much easier. Now you have to drive far out of the way. But... I seriously doubt it will be done in time. The skyline from that road looks just like any other big city- skyscrapers and all. There were tons of couples sitting along the side of the highway taking in the view and the fresh breeze. It must be hard to have a relationship here since most people live with their parents.

The surveying has started. This pic is of a mom that we interviewed and her daughter, inside their home. After interviewing her about her daughter's health, it became clear to me that she was very ill. She's probably not going to live much longer. She has a terrible liver condition and is feverish and diarrheal once a month at least, since birth. It's really something else to be right there with someone so young who you know is going to die.

Last night I had a great conference call with Siddharth Agarwal, an expert on child immunizations here in India. He gave me some great ideas on how to overcome two major problems I'm facing with my survey. 1) Women are never given diagnoses of their children's diseases by the doctors, they are just prescribed some medicine and sent home. So how can I assess childhood illness and mortality from vaccine-preventable diseases? I included a giant list of symptoms in my survey (fever, rash, etc) but for so many diseases the symptoms are the same. Mr. Agarwal suggested I just scrap that whole section and use India's National Family Health Survey data on urban slums instead. Yay! I didn't even know that existed... despite doing a copious amount of research for my literature review before getting here. That means I might not even need to find a control group in the Dharavi slum (to compare health in a registered slum compared to unregistered- KB).

The second problem- women do not want to talk about infant mortality. They fear that if they admit one of their infants has died, it reflects badly on them as a mother. Mr. Agarwal suggested that when I begin my qualitative, one-on-one interviewing, I breach the topic by first asking them about pregnancies. Within the last six months or year, so that I have fresh data. I guess asking moms to recall 5 years back is too much, especially if it was neonatal mortality- if a baby died within, say, ten days of birth, women often don't even name the baby or register its death.

Beyond that I am trying to start a rain water collection project. Linked up with a civil engineer through Patricia Goekhale at the Somaiya Hospital. Hopefully he will have some good ideas! I told my parents about it and my dad brought up the really good point about good filtration systems. Otherwise parasites will breed in the water and I'll end up giving all the families worms. Not good. They had tried it in the village my dad grew up in, in West Bengal.

Things to think about...... clearly I need to do some further research!
]]> Tue, 23 Jun 2009 04:06:00 EDT http://jbanerjee.tigblog.org/post/953403 18.975 72.825833318.97572.8258333 "Welcome to India" http://jbanerjee.tigblog.org/post/953405 Sometimes you just don't question.

Sometimes when you're in India, that happens a lot.

Today we went to meet a professor at the Tata Institute of Social Sciences. It was right across the street from IIPS and I had flashbacks to my brief stay in the hostel. Late nights spent staring at the blue glow of bad Hindi movies on a bite-sized tv from the 1970s as I lay awake wondering what the hell I was doing here and how on earth I am going to run regressions on my data when Biostats was a blurry year full of 0s and 1s..

We got there an hour early, because the 371 bus from the office to Chembur sometimes comes once an hour, sometimes every fifteen minutes, and often not at all. So we usually allot 2 hours for the commute, but today we hopped in a rickshaw and it only took 45 min. Yay!

So we decided to brave this seedy cafe Adriane and I had passed a few times before, Cafe Reloaded. Heather was with us, and we figured three of us would be a formidable enemy for the staring pubescent teenagers sitting there smoking hookah and playing UNO and pick up sticks (seriously) who behave as if they've never seen white people or females before!

All heads turned to look, and we headed "upstairs" to get a table and some coffee. The upstairs ceiling was 4.5ft high, no joke. So we crunched ourselves in there and ordered. We pondered for awhile who might have written the extremely hilarious menu. Beverages were listed under the heading "CALM DOWN" and the types of fries were "Angry Fries" or "Cool Fries."

After I ordered coffee, I also asked for fries. Heather asked "What is the difference between fries and "cool fries"?

Waiter: [head waggle] Two coffee?

Heather: No- one coffee, but what is "cool fries?"

Waiter: No coffee, two fries?

Heather: ...............

One never really knows what to expect when ordering food. It's like pin the tail on the donkey- you just make a blind attempt and hope to get something edible at least.

Suddenly this random guy who hadn't been in there before comes up the stairs and says something urgently to us that sounded something like "Believe me, the chicken has flown the coop!"

Heather and I eventually gathered that the guy was kicking us out. Indeed, some scary looking dudes came upstairs and everyone else in the place cleared out. We followed suit.

Hmm... was it because we are female? Americans? Or was the group that came in part of the Bombay mafia? A bunch of suparis ready to go on a killing spree? Probably not in Chembur, it's not that exciting of a place. Anyway, I wondered what happened to my coffee.

Weds I am moving to South Bombay. Can't wait... that's the Bombay I remember. Bandra West is lovely and fun, but it's sort of like LA- full of nouveau riche wannabe actors, a lot of neon, pretentious clubs, and American fast food.

Tomorrow my survey begins! I'm praying it goes well and that I get good data.


]]> Mon, 22 Jun 2009 09:06:00 EDT http://jbanerjee.tigblog.org/post/953405 18.975 72.825833318.97572.8258333 KB Coloring Book http://jbanerjee.tigblog.org/post/953407


The woman who runs PUKAR, Anita Patil-Deshmukh, is absolutely brilliant. She is so patient with all of the very young staff and takes an enormous amount of time out of her day to teach us, listen to our ideas and give suggestions on how to implement them.

Last week we went through pictures of KB with Kiran, Shrutika and Tejal (heretofore called KST) and chose some to print out to give to the kids. 

It's not much, but for a kid who has never ever seen a picture of him/herself, it means a lot. 

The problem we're facing is that we're doing research, and we're not ready to do any
 sort of intervention yet. So while we were talking to KB moms the other day, one of them said to Anita, "You people have been here for almost two years, and what have you done for us?"

Exactly. So this is a first step until we can start the immunization camps in the fall. We're identifying smart amp; confident women who are moms of kids under 5 now who can lead groups of women to do outreach, education about what tika is, and get people to bring their kids. We're also going to make pamphlets with pictures to hand out door to door. I'm sure a million other ideas will come up during this 3 year study about ways to involve and help the 
community. 

Well Anita had this abs brilliant idea to turn pictures of the kids doing public healthy things into a coloring book for the kids, and give them crayons also.

I have a hidden passion for graphic design, even though I suck at it. So I took a stab at the coloring book. Big thanks to my brother Raj for getting me all this design software for free! And big thanks to my Mac for just being freaking awesome. 


Heather just googled how to make a coloring book in photoshop and found a great tutorial. It's not that hard. But cleaning up the images afterward takes AGES so 
these are rough drafts. I plan on including at least 5 more pics. 


















]]> Thu, 18 Jun 2009 03:06:00 EDT http://jbanerjee.tigblog.org/post/953407 18.975 72.825833318.97572.8258333 like day and night... http://jbanerjee.tigblog.org/post/953409 Finally, I moved!! 

I'm in Bandra west now, just a 20 minute ride away from work. It has made such an enormous difference in my life, energy amp; morale to not have to commute for 3-4 hours a day. 

The place is great. A kitchen, fridge, tv, internet... return to civilization as I knew it :) And July 1 I'm moving to a friend's family's place in South Bombay. 

It's still extremely disorienting to be in Kaula Bandar during the day and here at night. 

We began our pilot of the survey on child immunization yesterday with six households. Basically I want to find out who's gotten immunization, death and disease from vaccine-preventable illnesses, barriers to access, and health knowledge. In the fall we'll begin a series of free immunization camps for all KB children. 

Adriane is focusing on environmental determinants of urban health- water and sanitation issues. Heather is working on health networks and health-seeking behavior.

We had to change the survey a lot after interviewing 6 women. Some of the questions were confusing or irrelevant, and women were quite uncomfortable (understandably) telling us if any of their infants died, as if it were a judgement on their ability as a mother. 

An interesting finding- all the babies born in the local government hospital had partial or full immunizations. None of the babies born in the
village had anything. When mothers took them to the government hospital for immunizations ("tika") they were turned away because the children's births were "unregistered" and they did not have a card documenting their birth. Given the huge number of women who deliver at home in India, this is HIGHLY problematic. 

My advocacy mode comes on full throttle and I'm determined to change this. I can be very persistent- I'm not going to leave Bombay without changing this, at least in this one hospital. 

Here are some pictures from KB. 

This is an aerial view, courtesy of Google Maps. KB is on a wharf. It was originally settled by Tamil boat builders 40 years or so ago. Now it's home to 18,000 people- mostly Tamils and Biharis. 

(Please zoom in to see)

I am almost positive this is an old shot, maybe 2 years old. Because the open spaces you see there are now completely filled up with new homes.


The next pic is a girl with the same name as me, Jaya. 

(Mine is a Bengalified version of Jaya). The girl to the right. Jaya and most of the KB kids have skin diseases and rashes both because of the heat, water, and from swimming in contaminated water- the same place where people go to the bathroom- in the ocean. It's also filled with trash and toxic chemicals from the ship repairs still going on there. 



There is a dispute between the Bombay Port Authority and the Bombay Municipal Corporation about whose responsibility it is to provide KB residents with water and sanitation facilities. The government is not taking responsibility because the land belongs to BPT. These are the realities of unregistered slums. 


Adriane and I are trying to figure out a way to do a water collection project during the monsoons, which will begin any day now. The roofs are not really slanted, so a gutter won't work. And since the homes are packed so tightly together, there's very little "outside" space where one could put a drum to collect water. But if it's out in the open, people will definitely steal it. 

Ideas are most welcome.
]]> Thu, 18 Jun 2009 01:06:00 EDT http://jbanerjee.tigblog.org/post/953409 18.975 72.825833318.97572.8258333 Brilliantly bad public health campaigns http://jbanerjee.tigblog.org/post/953411
 


I get kind of excited when I see public healthy PSAs. 

So when I saw stickers on the back of all these rickshaws spreading awareness about TB, I was psyched. 

"Don't spit. Spitting spreads TB"
"Stop TB: Do not Spit."

"TB is curable. Use D.O.T.S."

etc.

BUT THEY ARE ALL IN ENGLISH!!!!!!!!!

Whoops. Probably even the guy driving the rickshaw has no idea what they say.

But because so many billboards amp; storefront signs are written in both Hindi and English, I've completely regained my ability to read Hindi. Yay! I'm not saying I read well, just at the level I was at when I learned- a semester's worth in college :)  The only thing is, they focused so much on teaching us to read and write that they forgot to teach us a vocabulary or basic conversational skills. Basically a ten year old can read and speak more Hindi than I can. It's confusing because I learned how to read Bengali first, and the two look very close and sound kind of similar to an outside observer, but are in actuality entirely different. 

I understand about 50% of what's going on. It's ok, I just resort to the head waggle and everything is fine.
]]> Wed, 17 Jun 2009 12:06:00 EDT http://jbanerjee.tigblog.org/post/953411 18.975 72.825833318.97572.8258333 things I'm grateful for http://jbanerjee.tigblog.org/post/953413 A lot of people live swanky lifestyles here. Fancier than I've seen even in NYC. 

Alas, that is not me. Chembur is so far away from everything that there's not even anywhere to buy a bottle of water after 8pm or before 9am the next day (after we've already left for work). So after learning our lesson the next day (2 hour bus ride while parched is no fun) we wisened up and brought two bottles home with us every night. There's only two restaurants in the area, and my experience at one of them was an excercise in patience. 

For some reason India has the worst waitservice ever. There are 20 waiters doing the job of 3 people, and so they interrupt your meal ever thirty seconds to ask you if you want more water, want to order more food, dessert, another drink, etc etc etc. They even insist on serving you onto your plate. Sometimes I think that if I lived here permanently, I would just melt into a pile of mush, unable to bear the weight of my own head without five underemployed people holding it up.

 Anyway, things I am grateful for back home:

- Ice Cubes

- Having a kitchen and being able to cook what I want to eat, not having to spend $ on every single meal

- Salad. My god I miss raw vegetables. Everything here is cooked, and if you eat a salad in most normal restaurants you will die. Or at least get some bacterial infection from the water the vegetables are washed in

- Being able to drive a car without fearing for my life

- Being able to go for a jog. In shorts. 

Things I am grateful for in Bombay:

- Pudina Hara. The most amazing cure for stomach upset ever. And just about every problem related to the GI tract. A little green minty ball of genius.

- Indian fashion sense. Nowhere else in the world would I be able to get away with wearing a fire-engine red top with fluorescent orange pants. And still look good.

- Bollywood soap operas. I never knew a camera could zoom in so many times on one bleary-eyed crying face in the span of 5 seconds. It makes me feel as though my level of melodrama is perfectly normal.

- The head waggle. It's not a yes, it's not a no, it just is what it is. Enough said.

- Old re-runs of bad American tv shows on all the time- Who's the Boss, Different Strokes, Power Rangers... And the most obscure movies from the 80's. The other day one was on about this guy who goes blackface so that he can get into Harvard. Yep.... 

- Sandals. You know those cute, sparkly, creatively designed sandals that became popular in the US just two years ago? Well they've had them here forever, and they are everywhere and cheap. I've had a pair from Pakistan for two years and they haven't even really worn down at all

- Indian TV advertising. You would assume it's bootleg if you didn't know any better. And you'd be wrong, because it's better advertising than anywhere else in the world. Brilliantly creative. Where else could you see a gaggle of sumo wrestlers floating around in the air ballet dancing in a Parle Lite bon-bons commercial??

Check it out, it's amazing:



]]> Mon, 15 Jun 2009 11:06:00 EDT http://jbanerjee.tigblog.org/post/953413 18.975 72.825833318.97572.8258333 Holy Shit Moments http://jbanerjee.tigblog.org/post/953415 I think I'll be adding to this post on a daily basis... I just have a feeling. 

"Holy Shit!" moments so far:

- Eating breakfast with Heather and Adriane and suddenly seeing a cow galloping down the street

- Seeing a dude get hit by a car, fall down and crack his head open, start bleeding profusely all over his clothes, and then get up and walk away as though nothing at all happened. And no one even flinched

- Any autorickshaw ride. Every five minutes you almost run into a human, motorcycle, bus, or truck. Getting squeezed between two giant tractor trailers is the best... your life flashes before your eyes and you wish that you could have at least been clean and fresh smelling when you were about to eat it.

- Hurtling at high speed right into a crowd of people during rush hour, just knowing intuitively, in the "welcome to India" kind of way, that they will move out of the way and somehow things will turn out ok.

- Hitting an older lady in a rickshaw who was crossing the street, luckily at slow speed, and she just kept on walking as though that happens to her everyday.

- Kaula Bandar. The slum we're working in. Seeing kids swim in the same place they have just pooed. Imagining living in 100 degree temperatures in the full sun, with absolutely no water and two toilets for 18,000 people. 
 
]]> Sat, 13 Jun 2009 10:06:00 EDT http://jbanerjee.tigblog.org/post/953415 18.975 72.825833318.97572.8258333 Globalization and Gentrification http://jbanerjee.tigblog.org/post/953417





Today we got a tour of Bombay. I was delighted to learn that it was not a typical tourist tour (since I've pretty much done all the touristy stuff here already) but a tour of the real Bombay, where people live, eat, work and play. 

First we visited an area called Girgaon. The area had tons of textile mills from the British era dating back 100 years, and the housing was built for the workers. They are called Chawls- basically tenement style, close quarter living. From the outside it looks pretty basic. But then
 you go inside and there are a million tin
y lanes and the smallest “houses” you have ever seen with one or two small rooms with random stairs coming out of nowhere, and all these cats just chilling. They don’t even move; you have to step over them. (by the way, I'm holding the camera straight in this picture). 

There are 4-20 people living in rooms mostly no bigger than 10 x 10 feet. I am not even exaggerating. It’s nuts, in the ones that house 20+ they sleep in shifts, so when half are at work the other half sleeps, then switch, repeat. They sleep on mattress pad type things that you can roll up and store away, and every inch of space is used well and efficiently, up to the ceiling. We went to Shrutika and Tejal’s house in that chawl. It was re
ally nice inside, two rooms with a kitche and bathroom. More on that later...  We watched a documentary they had made on Girgaon’s gentrification. 
Their mom fed us all this yummy stuff and we were so dehydrated we drank gallons of water and chai. Then of course after the film we had to pee, and basically there’s no toilet, it’s just a shower. So you pee in the shower drain and wash it away with water. Lovely! I kind of slipped a bit and peed a little on the bottom of my jeans... Little did I know, this was not to be my last experience with pee today. 

The documentary, by PUKAR, was really well made, professionally done. It was about the loss of the traditional culture, especially their theater, music and dance style that is completely unique to this place. These condo developers are coming in and bulldozing the chawls to build giant monstrosities 20 stories high that block out all sunlight and humanity. The communal culture of the chawls is disappearing quickly, turned into cold, anonymous concrete boxes. Yuck! They are SO ugly. They use cheap cement mixed with god knows what, so the buildings come out the most awful shade of grey/green and look run down within two years. Plus it’s so damp here.

To avoid complete uproar, the developers often build a smaller building to relocate the chawl residents. But the fees for upkeep are more than the wages people make, so they sell them and move away and can’t keep their jobs inthe city because of the giant commute to anywhere remotely affordable. The chawls are on prime real estate. Kiran told us that Tejal and Shrutika’s house would sell for 2.5 million rupees today (about $60,000 USD). It’s absolutely incredible.

We walked through many maze-like lanes and then randomly came across a beautiful temple and community courtyard in the middle of the chawl. Bombay is like that, it surprises you in the strangest ways. There is an entire lake and Nandi temple in the city area where my aunt lives in South Bombay. It’s huge, quiet, clean and peaceful (a rarity in this city) and has these beautiful steps on the banks all around it from the 17th century.

Afterward we walked miles and miles all throughout the city, in areas I’d never seen before. Every single neighborhood is completely unique here. Different architecture, people, roads, stores. We went to the spice market and saw how they prepare chili powders and a whole range of other spices that involve chilies. They have all these machines that pound down the chilies, and they toss them around in a huge cauldron over a fire, then dry them in the sun. We were coughing and sneezing forever afterward.

One of the other students (there are three of us here) had heat stroke or something, she sat down on the street outsideof the chawl and threw up. There were about 100 people watching, and she kind of sticks out like  a sore thumb- pale as snow, big moviestar sunglasses.

Shrutika got her some ORS (oral rehydration salts) and she was ok after awhile. I never thought I would be in a situation where we'd need ORS. It’s like something you learn in public health school and store away in your brain so that you can tell poor people to use it on their dehydrated diarrheal children later :)

We walked through many unique neighborhoods. The "hot chips" street, past the only farm in Mumbai, past Parsi-only and Jain-only condo buildings, etc. 

Then we went shoe shoping. First we went to Bata but everything was too cute and pretty for our needs. I got some awesome sparkly purple jellies flats though. Tejal and Shrutika probably thought they were heinous :) So we went to a few more stores and we bought rubber waterproof horrid black shiny shoes with a velcro buckle to wear to the KB slum tomorrow. Absolutely stylish. If I wore them in Williamsburg I guarantee you within a month it would be the new fad sweeping the nation. 

Then had a fabulous meal at a Persian place full of Afghanis and ladies in burqas, and then had the horrible realization that we had just chugged about 8 glasses of unfiltered water each. We had asked at the beginning if the water was safe for us to drink, but then saw them refill from regular pitchers. I will know after 10pm tonight whether or not I’ve contracted shigella, dysentery, or god knows what!

I almost fainted a couple times today. It was 100 degrees and we were out in the full sun from 8am-5pm. Weather.com lies! It said it would be like 80-90 here. I would be exhausted after walking that much anywhere, but to do it here was brutal. I sweat all the way through my shirt on both sides- it looked like I had gone swimming. My hands and feet were black from the grime and grit. Toward the end of the day we were about to leave the Dr. Bhau Daji Lad Museum (wonderful and absolutely beautiful) when Kiran told us "Ok now we're going to the zoo!" 

OH dear. Adriane and I looked at each other and wordlessly decided to call it a day. Plus, we both have ethical objections to locking wild animals in cages to stare at. 

We I took the train back to the hostel afterward. It was my first time on a local train in India. I had been on the sleeper trains between cities a few times, but this was very different. Quite an adventure. Huge throngs of people make a mad rush for the train just pushing each other out of the way, elbowing and shoving. Everyone is fighting for a little bit of space in this city where it comes at such a premium.

There is a separate train compartment for ladies only, thank god. This pic really doesn't do it justice at all. I guess because everyone is clustered in the open doorway.

Because the other ones are full of lecherous men who just stare and stare at us. The trains look like freight trains, open doors and really old. I was pressed up against Adriane for 40 minutes all sweaty and about to pass out, with angry women shouting at each other to get on at each train stop. They don’t even let people out of the train before pouring in, you have to fight to get out and the train only stops for one minute. Two women were fighting over who would get in first, and one woman literally put her hand on the woman’s throat and threw her backward. Wow! 

Then, when I thought things could get no worse, all of a sudden I felt something warm and wet on the back of my leg. I tried so hard not to freak out but I couldn’t help it, I was horrified. A small child had peed on my leg!!!!!!!!!

I was about to start flipping out hysterically, but Adriane was just cracking up. I just ended up laughing at the ridiculousness of it…. In retrospect it was hilarious. I was covered in pee, puke and grime. Then pure exhaustion took over and it was a feat of remarkable stamina that we were able to get into another half hour in a rickshaw to get home and take a shower. Oh lord I’ve never been so filthy in my life, not even after tackle soccer in a mud field after a rainstorm.

My boyfriend Victor had written me this amazingly sweet email, and I had printed it out to keep with me and save for reading in times of true desperation. I thought that would probably be about 2-3 times all summer. By today, it had already been 8 :)  It was kind of like thesigned pinup photos actresses would send to soldiers in World War II to give them hope on the battlefield when all else was lost. Ha….

When I move to South Bombay on July 1, I will take that train every day. But I don’t mind, because it’s just a half hour from her place to Bandra, and anything is better than the BEST bus in rush hour traffic. The noise, heat and fumes are utterly reminiscent of what a Catholic hell must be like.

So… today has been an adventure! All in all a very good day and worth every bit of it. Except the pee. 
]]> Thu, 11 Jun 2009 10:06:00 EDT http://jbanerjee.tigblog.org/post/953417 18.975 72.825833318.97572.8258333 an epic saga http://jbanerjee.tigblog.org/post/953419
Settling in and starting work at PUKAR. I'm very impressed with the organization. All the staff are very young and very accomplished. The team working with us, Kiran, Shrutika and Tejal, are brilliant. They accompany us on the slum visits, conduct interviews, and translate for us. The Kaula Bandar (KB) population is mostly Tamil and Bihari.

I'm beginning surveying on child immunization next week- 200 households. It's sort of intimidating, I've never done household surveying before- my background is in advocacy. 

The organization is very committed to learning and documentation. We get to do some workshops for them too, so we're both teaching each other so much. We're going to give workshops on STATA statistical software, GIS mapping, creating an online networking/membership platform, advocacy campaigning, how to write a literature review, and overview of biostatistics/ demography.

Work has been so hectic, and my commute is 1.5 hours each way by public bus, "BEST." It’s pretty brutal- they don’t really stop at the bus stop, they just slow down and you have to run and jump on while it’s rolling. BEST buses take armpit smelliness to a whole new level. Harrowing! Glad i don't have to do it alone though, another student from school is with me. There are three of us here- myself, Adriane and Heather. 

Heather and I recently travelled together in Chile this December amp; January on a Harvard course on health sector reform. We braved the Patagonian Mountains, and attempted to translate "awkward turtle" into Spanish through hand gestures and motions to a group of Chilenos. 

Adriane and I took the wrong bus one day because some lady told us we could also take the 505 to Bandra Station, near where the office is, but she was wrong, it dropped us in the NICE part of Bandra. We were an hour late to work and they were worried that we’d been kidnapped or murdered or something. So, after getting off the bus we had to take an auto rickshaw for another 15 min to get to the office. The first time they tried to charge us 10x the amount- we hadn't been paying attention and the driver did not start the meter. Luckily both of us have been through this many times before in many different countries, so we gave him 20 Rs. and got out.   (48 Rs. to $1 USD).

On the way back to the hostel after work, we took an auto rickshaw instead of the bus for 1.5 hours in rush
hour traffic is the most miserable hell on earth. Since they are so low to the ground, cars and buses’ exhaust pipes are right at face level. Lovely… I had been wondering what on earth dupattas are good for other than getting caught on things and falling off twenty times a day, and now I know! To cover your face when breathing in car exhaust. 

Back at IIPS, things are looking dismal. After a long day of work all you want to do is vegetate somewhere where there's good AC and eat a nice dinner. Neither of which are available there... No fridge, kitchen, internet, food isn't even included in that. IF you want to eat in the cafeteria you have to sign up for a whole month! My room looks like a jail or mental institution, and the pillow is like a cardboard box. I wouldn't mind this at all and have slept in MUCH worse, it's just the price that's killing me. That's about $750/month, which is outrageous for Bombay especially in Chembur, which is on the other planet compared to everything else. 
]]> Wed, 10 Jun 2009 10:06:00 EDT http://jbanerjee.tigblog.org/post/953419 18.975 72.825833318.97572.8258333 Bombay Summer http://jbanerjee.tigblog.org/post/953421 I am back in Bombay for three months this summer, working on a study on child immunizations with a research collective here called PUKAR. 

After a somewhat harrowing journey here (the couple behind me had a poodle, out of its carrier, that barked the entire plane ride- i almost strangled it) 


I made it to the hostel at the Indian Institute of Population Sciences. 

Although I had been forewarned by my friends from Bo
mbay that it is located in the middle of nowhere (in Chembur), I was not really prepared for what $28 USD/night was buying me. Especially when I found out the locals only pay 30 Rs./ night!!! Basically we were paying over forty times what locals pay. Now that's what I call a Gringo Tax!

It's great to be back in this city. I'm most at home in big cities... my favorites are New York, Mexico City, Buenos Aires, Hanoi and of course Bombay!!
]]> Tue, 09 Jun 2009 09:06:00 EDT http://jbanerjee.tigblog.org/post/953421 18.975 72.825833318.97572.8258333 Why the average american hates the idea of "universal access" to anything http://jbanerjee.tigblog.org/post/671339
I think I’ve figured it out. There’s something in public health called the “prevention paradox”: measures of disease prevention that offer great benefits to populations at large (such as fluoridation of water sources, wearing seatbelts, lifestyle changes, smallpox vaccinations, etc) offer little benefit or personal incentive to individuals.

But research shows that health education geared toward individuals (counseling on reducing salt intake for hypertension, exercise for diabetes, etc) are less effective when geared only toward individuals and/or used in a short-term approach. People are motivated to act for immediate gain and substantial personal benefits, but “the medical motivation for health education is inherently weak. Their health next year is not likely to be much better if they accept our advice or if they reject it. Much more powerful as motivators for health education are the social rewards of enhanced self-esteem and social approval.” (Geoffrey Rose, Sick Individuals and Sick Populations.)

Physicians also prefer individualized health education because with population interventions (such as anti-smoking campaigns), their success rates are low and results take a long time to achieve.

The US is such an individual-centric society that people have no cultural reason to care about population health as a whole. Most Americans do not see that universal access to healthcare means that problems are detected and treated early (which is less costly), and that sometimes preventive medicine can encourage life-saving behavior change. That the person going into the ER for stomach pain because s/he does not have health insurance is costing the taxpayer literally thousands more dollars than s/he would if s/he’d gone to a primary care physician.

Nor do they understand the concept of herd immunity- if a large proportion of a population is immune to or vaccinated against a particular disease, the likelihood that one individual will get that disease is far less.

The focus on the individual and the apathy toward the well-being of communities and populations is by no means restricted to health alone. The same can be said about the current financial crisis. Individuals who borrowed more than they could pay back, and their unscrupulous lenders have created a global downward spiral of hundreds of economies, with the bottom billion hit the hardest.

I find it ironic and deeply saddening that 30 million more people have been pushed into starvation thus far due to the financial crisis while bankers are taking hefty bonuses and governments are bailing out businesses that were failing even before the crash (GM, Chrysler, etc…)

]]> Mon, 18 May 2009 16:09:00 EDT http://jbanerjee.tigblog.org/post/671339 18.975 72.825833318.97572.8258333 my letter to the editor of the Economist- Global Gag Rule and Obama http://jbanerjee.tigblog.org/post/583311

Sir,

I find it inaccurate to call President Obama's decision to end the Global Gag Rule, an "order... ending the prohibition on sending aid to international organisations that provide abortion." (Brief Encounter, January 31st). Obama's decision does not change the fact that US tax-payers' dollars cannot be used to provide abortions overseas. The
legislation, first enacted by Ronald Reagan, rejected by Clinton and reinstated by Bush, prohibited US family planning assistance to organizations that use non-US funds to perform abortions (even in countries where it is legal), provide counseling and referrals for abortion, and lobby to liberalize abortion laws.

None of these restrictions would be permitted within the United States, where abortion is legal. Yet US ideologues had no qualms about denying poor women the right to decide when and if to carry out a pregnancy. Each year there are 19 million unsafe abortions, most of which could be prevented if poor women had access to voluntary family
planning including contraception, sex education, and the ability to prevent unwanted pregnancies. In addition, women with fewer births are able to invest more in their children's nutrition and education-- resulting in healthier, more productive contributors to society.

Many of the organizations that lost their funding were unable to provide other life-saving services such as maternal and infant healthcare, poverty reduction, and HIV prevention. For example, the United Nations Population Fund lost its US contribution of $244 million over seven years, based on a spurious claim of collusion with the Chinese government in coerced sterilizations. This contributed to 74,000 deaths from unsafe abortion globally each year, even though Bush's own hand-picked State Department team visited China and found no evidence that UNFPA participated in such programs; and, indeed, that its programs were "a force for good." Obama's move to restore reproductive freedoms to women will surely reduce global demand for abortion and improve overall population health.



(PS- the picture of all the old white dudes is from bush's second day in office, when he signed the global gag rule back into its miserable existence.)
]]> Tue, 03 Feb 2009 22:37:00 EST http://jbanerjee.tigblog.org/post/583311 18.975 72.825833318.97572.8258333 AIDS Sutra: Untold Stories from India http://jbanerjee.tigblog.org/post/541831 http://sawnet.org/books/reviews.php?Aids+Sutra)



Today there are approximately 3 million Indians living with HIV and AIDS, a number that masks the human faces behind a disease that has been reviled and misunderstood as the worst plague in human history. A disease often considered to afflict only those regarded as the dredges of society, AIDS has the potential both to expose the dark underbelly of society, and also to inspire triumphs of human compassion and perseverance.
AIDS Sutra, funded by the Gates Foundation, is a compilation of 16 vibrant essays about Indians living with HIV by some of South Asia’s most gifted authors, including Salman Rushdie, Vikram Seth, and Kiran Desai. Several of the essays are narrated directly from the authors’ home communities; others are the fruition of their travels to the vastly different regions of India.

Siddharth Deb’s poignant account, “The Lost Generation of Manipur,” brings him to a remote corner of India bereft of employment opportunities and constantly on edge due to communal violence. Uncontrolled injecting drug use in the region puts young people of working age especially at risk for HIV infection.

Salman Rushdie’s piece on the politics and culture of the hijra (intersexed and/or transgender) community is a concise account of a population that defies society´s common [mis]perceptions around gender and HIV risk. Rushdie interviews a transgender AIDS activist named Laxmi, who lives in a constant duality of gender- going as a man by day and living with her parents, and transforming into a woman at night and on the weekends. Her advocacy on behalf of this distinct community in India has helped to distinguish hijras as a third gender- with different needs and challenges than men who have sex with men.

Other stories included in the book examine the lives of truck drivers, sex workers, and devadasis, women traditionally given to god, and nowadays women who choose or are forced into sex work as a means of income generation. In Sunil Gangopadhyay’s essay, “Return to Sonagacchi,” the author returns home to Kolkata to compose a compelling account of the lives of sex workers in Sonagachhi, narrating both the deprivation they face and also their power as an organized movement fighting for their rights as sex workers to safety, health services, education for their children, freedom from police persecution, and dignity.

Bill and Melinda Gates give the anthology’s introduction, and its insightful forward is written by the Nobel Prize-winning economist and author of Development as Freedom, Amartya Sen. Sen revolutionized the traditional economic paradigm by asserting that development is not simply about increasing per capita income, but rather “a process of expanding the real freedoms that people enjoy.” His examination of the economic effects of AIDS in India is nuanced in its consideration of both the beneficial impact of Indian pharmaceuticals in producing affordable antiretroviral drugs for much of the world, and the irony that income disparity in India prevents the majority of Indians living with HIV from accessing treatment, quality medical facilities, shelter, employment opportunities, and community support.

Sen argues that stigma is the primary fuel of the epidemic in India, where widespread ignorance pervades about how HIV is—and is not—transmitted. Among young Indians just reaching working age, knowledge how HIV is spread is dismally low at 25% of the population according to UNAIDS (20% comprehensive knowledge among women and 36% among men). Because many Indians still believe that HIV can be transmitted through touch, sharing food, or through aerosol transmission, Indians living with HIV face discrimination in schools and workplaces, ostracization, rejection from their families, and in many cases, violence and even death.

India’s uncomfortable and often times paradoxical relationship with sex and sexuality is often at the root of ignorance and discrimination against HIV, with 87% of new infections in India occurring through unprotected sexual intercourse each year according to India’s National AIDS Control Organization. Despite an ancient culture rich in celebration of natural human sexuality, imperial-era taboos surrounding sex continue to create a stifling conservatism that limits access to scientific information about sexually transmitted infections, reproductive health, and the rights of women and sexual minorities.

In Amit Chaudhuri’s essay, “Healing,” he remarks that “The troubling ambiguity of sex through history— the fact that it bestows life and pleasure, and also, in a way that can’t be entirely explained by morality, confuses and shames— have converged in a new way upon this disease.” His interviews with Alka Desphpande, an AIDS researcher and physician in India’s first AIDS ward, reveal the challenges faced even by the medical community in becoming educated about HIV. Large numbers of Indian health care workers still believe that HIV is transmitted by touch, and widespread denial of treatment and discrimination against people living with HIV is common.

The first essay “Mister X Versus Hospital Y” by Nikita Lalwani tells the story of a Dr. Tokugha who is infected with HIV and becomes an important activist when his results are disclosed to his family (and bride-to-be’s family) before he himself is made aware of his status, just days before the wedding. His lawsuit against the hospital’s breach of his privacy sparked controversial debate and the release of his name in newspapers all across India. The court ruled against him, “decreeing that the hospital’s release of the information to the minister without his consent had ‘saved the life’ of Toku’s proposed fiancée. The essay forces us to consider the complexities behind forced disclosure of one’s HIV status. Not only was Dr. “Toku”’s right to self-disclose taken away from him, the judge tacked on a devastating addition to the ruling, that suspended the right of HIV positive people to marry. The laudable human rights organization, The Lawyers’ Collective, fought for years to restore this basic human right to people living with HIV, succeeding in 2002. Since then, Dr. Toku has become a prominent physician in the field, and goes above and beyond by arranging matches between people living with HIV.

Discrimination and national legislation intersect most brutally in India with the penal code provision 377 that makes homosexuality a criminal offense. Drafted in 1860 during British Rule, the anachronistic law fines and imprisons Indians caught in the act of sodomy and even oral sex for between ten years and a lifetime in jail. The law has served to drive homosexuality “underground” where men having unprotected sex with men cannot be reached for HIV awareness raising, sexual health services, STI screening, or recourse for police persecution and demanding of bribes.

One story included in the collection was strikingly disappointing— to the point of giving offense. Shobhaa De’s “When AIDS Came Home” reveals the author’s ignorant, discriminatory and classist lack of understanding of HIV and AIDS. Her account of how her driver becomes infected with HIV and gradually dies from AIDS is peppered with comments about her “repulsion” that he had spent so much time with her children, speculations about his involvement with sex workers and his sexuality, and self-congratulatory accolades when she provided occasional money for a doctor or medicine.

De’s piece examines her misconceptions about AIDS and vaguely suggests that she has seen the error in her was (perhaps simply because it would not be politically correct to admit otherwise), but still fails to include what lessons she has learned. Indeed, to conclude her story Shobhaa marvels that “Although they are such an intimate part of our lives, how little we really know about the people who work for us… it took Shankar’s death to see him as a human.” She concludes by lying to her children and telling them that the driver was infected through a blood transfusion because the reality that many men purchase sex is too shocking to bear.

By far the most thought-provoking inclusion in the anthology, Siddharth Dhanvant Shanghvi’s “Hello, Darling,” diverges from the book’s overall focus on more “marginalized” populations of sex workers, drug users and truckers, to recount the life experiences with HIV of an upper-class homosexual film director whose pseudonym is given as “Murad.” Openly flamboyant, driven to success, and yet still slow to “come out” about his homosexuality, and later, HIV status, Murad escapes the confines of Bombay and moves to New York City. He is unable to move in the local film circuit and returns to Bombay years later, where he eventually succumbs to AIDS.

Shanghvi’s piece is particularly well-researched and deeply-felt; his account considers early chronicles of the impact of AIDS on art and artists in Edmund White’s “Esthetics and Loss,” and the strange phenomenon of how AIDS “got noticed,” as explained in Urvashi Vaid’s “Virtual Equality,” in which she observes “how the passing of an entire generation from AIDS helped give rise to the modern idea of homosexuality: thousands of men had to die, in fact, to have to be seen as alive in the first place.” Shanghvi’s inclusion was particularly important and contrasted sharply with De’s story. “Hello, Darling” should serve as a wake-up call to elites believing in their infallibility, since the risk behaviors that propel the spread of HIV in India are by no means limited to lower socioeconomic echelons of society.

Overall, the anthology is an important, moving, and transformative read. Each story is relatively brief and gives a taste of the authors’ diverse and prolific literary talents. Some tales, such as De’s, are clearly geared toward upper class Indians who are beginning to understand the complexities of the AIDS epidemic in India. Still others delve into economic, political and human rights aspects of the disease. Till now, literature and artistic works on AIDS in India have been limited and relatively unknown. AIDS Sutra gives voice to communities and individuals that have been destroyed, silenced, affected and transformed by AIDS in a jarring and yet deeply meaningful manner.
]]> Fri, 28 Nov 2008 14:42:00 EST http://jbanerjee.tigblog.org/post/541831 18.975 72.825833318.97572.8258333 Iraq America's Recession http://jbanerjee.tigblog.org/post/336241

I have mixed feelings about MoveOn.org, but I really admire their new campaign "Iraq/Recession". They have a nice new email action that allows you to easily and automatically write an op-ed to your local newspaper (they send it, you write it) making the tie between the American recession and the Iraq spending. (A tie that is obvious, but few people actually realize!)


Some interesting facts:

"As of today, we've spent over $495 billion in Iraq.1 With the economy in the tank, think about what that money could do here at home: Cover millions of kids who don't have insurance, or help folks who're losing their jobs and homes.

Instead, it's supporting a failed occupation in Iraq.

More and more Americans are making the connection between the billions we've spent over there and the crumbling economy here at home. In fact, a new AP poll shows that most Americans think ending the war is the best way to help the economy.2 But pundits still talk about the war and the economy as two unrelated things.

* The recession is going to force states to cut back their budgets. Most likely, the cuts are going to affect the services that working families need and depend on.3
* Meanwhile, the war is costing Americans more than $338 million a day. 4 That money could be spent to help out the folks who're hurting most now. For less than what we're spending on the war, we could pay for affordable housing for hundreds of thousands of families, health care for children, or scholarships to help folks pay for education. 5
* Gas prices are close to double what they were before the war began. The cost of oil is still hovering around $100 barrel. 6
* We're borrowing $343 million every day to finance the war in Iraq. 7 Our skyrocketing debt will be a bigger and bigger drag on the economy—slowing recovery and burdening future generations.


Write an Op-Ed

If thousands of us write, we can get the media to stop ignoring the connection between the war and the recession. The opinion pages are the most widely read pages in the newspaper, so we can also make sure voters—who are growing increasingly concerned about the economy—know that any candidate who wants to stay in Iraq has no plan for the economy."

]]> Tue, 19 Feb 2008 13:01:00 EST http://jbanerjee.tigblog.org/post/336241 18.975 72.825833318.97572.8258333 Jesus' Halo http://jbanerjee.tigblog.org/post/266963 Brothers. Today's popular games are all about gruesome murder and
violence.

I had the lovely experience of playing Halo, a video game which,
thankfully, I am terrible at, which involves killing people with guns,
lasers, nail-spewing killing machines, and other highly effective and
incredibly scary weapons. When you kill someone, your entire
controller shakes and vibrates much like, I imagine, a real machine
gun would do.

I can understand why this game is so popular with soldiers in Iraq and
Afghanistan. It must help them to dehumanize their colonial subjects,
and normalize the experience of killing. I can also see why it's
popular with American teens, who are inundated with graphic violence
through movies, television, and news networks. Ultimately it will lead
them to sign up, to "die for their country" and maybe kill off a few
Muslims here and there to boot.

To the point-

It seems the Church thinks this is a wonderful way to attract young
people to the church, and, in their words, to promote "fellowship."

Whatever happened to "Thou Shalt Not Kill"? Is non-violence pass??


New York Times
NATIONAL | October 7, 2007


Thou Shalt Not Kill, Except in a Popular Video Game at Church
By MATT RICHTEL
Ministers and pastors desperate to reach young congregants are
using an unusual recruiting tool: the violent video game Halo.]]> Thu, 11 Oct 2007 20:20:00 EDT http://jbanerjee.tigblog.org/post/266963 18.975 72.825833318.97572.8258333 New York rejects abstinence-only sex education programs! http://jbanerjee.tigblog.org/post/262859 Great news- New York has finally acknowledged that abstinence-only sex education may not be the best idea in a state with rising HIV infection rates, teen pregnancy, and STIs.

Why are the Catholics still saying that giving young people condoms will increase "promiscuity" when numerous studies show that comprehensive sex education actually causes young people to delay first intercourse and to use condoms when they do have sex? (1)



New York Times: New York Just Says No to Abstinence Funding

NEW YORK REGION | September 21, 2007

By JENNIFER MEDINA
The decision puts New York in line with at least 10 other states
that have decided to forgo the federal money in recent years.


Excerpt:

"Dr. Daines's announcement came the same day that the New York Civil
Liberties Union, which opposes abstinence-only education, released a
report detailing the number of such programs in the state. The report
stated that roughly half of the groups teaching abstinence in the
state were religious groups and that the state had done almost nothing
to monitor them."

(NYCLU Report: http://www.nyclu.org/files/financing_ignorance_092007.pdf)
NYCLU Article: http://www.nyclu.org/node/1395




Calling Bush's teen education program on sex a failure, New York state
will forgo $3.7 million in federal aid

By CATHLEEN F. CROWLEY, Staff writer

First published: Friday, September 21, 2007

Excerpt:

"The Bush administration's abstinence-only program is an example of a
failed national health-care policy directive, based on ideology rather
than on sound scientific-based evidence," Health Commissioner Richard
Daines said Thursday.

..


The New York Catholic Conference, which represents New York's bishops,
called the administration's decision unfortunate.

"Most people would agree that teenagers are too young to be having
sex, therefore the consistent message to them ought to be that this is
a behavior that is undesirable and you should refrain from it," said
Dennis Poust, spokesman for the conference. "The idea of so-called
comprehensive sex education sounds OK at first blush, but what the
children are being taught is instruction in condom usage which leads
to promotion of sexual activity."

Nearly half of all New York teenagers have sex before graduating high
school, according to the 2005 National Youth Risk Behavior Survey from
the U.S. Census. In Albany County, 427 girls between 15 and 19 became
pregnant in 2004 and 199 had abortions, according to state health
department statistics."


Citation:
(1) UNAIDS, 1997. "Impact of HIV and Sexual Health Education on the Sexual Behaviour of Young People: A Review."

"Only three out of 53 studies that evaluated specific interventions found increases in sexual behaviour associated with sexual health education. Twenty-two reported that HIV and/or sexual health education either delayed the onset of sexual activity, reduced the number of partners, or reduced unplanned pregnancy and STD rates."
]]> Tue, 02 Oct 2007 16:30:00 EDT http://jbanerjee.tigblog.org/post/262859 18.975 72.825833318.97572.8258333 Bush vs. Science- the death march continues http://jbanerjee.tigblog.org/post/238075
Steiger, with absolutely no qualifications in global health whatsoever, pulled the report because it did not laud the United States for its action against global health crises such as AIDS, TB and Malaria.

What is there to laud? The United States, the wealthiest country in the world, ranks last in the amount of money it spends on global health from among industrialized nations as a percentage of its GNP/ wealth. (Citation: USAID)

Congratulations to Carmona for speaking out about how his freedom of speech has been curtailed.



Bush Aide Blocked Report
Global Health Draft In 2006 Rejected for Not Being Political

By Christopher Lee and Marc Kaufman
Washington Post Staff Writers
Sunday, July 29, 2007; Page A01

A surgeon general's report in 2006 that called on Americans to help tackle global health problems has been kept from the public by a Bush political appointee without any background or expertise in medicine or public health, chiefly because the report did not promote the administration's policy accomplishments, according to current and former public health officials.

The report described the link between poverty and poor health, urged the U.S. government to help combat widespread diseases as a key aim of its foreign policy, and called on corporations to help improve health conditions in the countries where they operate. A copy of the report was obtained by The Washington Post.

Three people directly involved in its preparation said its publication was blocked by William R. Steiger, a specialist in education and a scholar of Latin American history whose family has long ties to President Bush and Vice President Cheney. Since 2001, Steiger has run the Office of Global Health Affairs in the Department of Health and Human Services.]]> Mon, 30 Jul 2007 16:10:00 EDT http://jbanerjee.tigblog.org/post/238075 18.975 72.825833318.97572.8258333 Bush Pardons Scooter Libby for Doing His Dirty Work!! http://jbanerjee.tigblog.org/post/226669
What is the lesson learned? Even if you're a diplomat and you question the Bush Adminstration's lies (by writing an op-ed that Iraq did not buy enriched Uranium from Niger), you and your family will be punished by the government. (They leaked the name of his wife, Valerie Wilson, for being an undercover CIA agent).

Bush is not pardoning Scooter, he's pardoning himself. With 18 months left in office, he can do whatever he wants pretty much, with no repercussion whatsoever.

Jesus now we've got the likes of Scooter Libby and Paris Hilton roaming free on the streets of America. Talk about dictatorships!


WASHINGTON | July 3, 2007
]]> Tue, 03 Jul 2007 12:55:00 EDT http://jbanerjee.tigblog.org/post/226669 18.975 72.825833318.97572.8258333 America's Concentration Camps for Immigrants http://jbanerjee.tigblog.org/post/223567
I thought after we put Japanese people in concentration camps in America in the 40s and 50s, we'd said goodbye to Nazi-style death camps? I guess not.



New Scrutiny as Immigrants Die in Custody
New York Times
By NINA BERNSTEIN
Published: June 26, 2007


[Excerpts:]

Sandra M. Kenley was returning home from her native Barbados in 2005 when she was swept into the United States’ fastest-growing form of incarceration, immigration detention.

...
Seven weeks later, Ms. Kenley died in a rural Virginia jail, where she had complained of not receiving medicine for high blood pressure. She was one of 62 immigrants to die in administrative custody since 2004, according to a new tally by Immigration and Customs Enforcement that counted many more deaths than the 20 previously known.
...
In the case of Ms. Kenley, a legal permanent resident of the United States for more than 30 years, detention interrupted her medical care for high blood pressure, a fibroid tumor and uterine bleeding. An autopsy attributed her death to an enlarged heart from chronic hypertensive disease. But a report by emergency medical services said that she had fallen from a top bunk, and that a cellmate had pounded on the door for 20 minutes before guards responded.
........

The inspector general in the Department of Homeland Security recently announced a “special review” of two deaths, including that of a Korean woman at a privately run detention center in Albuquerque. Fellow detainees told a lawyer that the woman, Young Sook Kim, had pleaded for medical care for weeks, but received scant attention until her eyes yellowed and she stopped eating.

Ms. Kim died of pancreatic cancer in federal custody on Sept. 11, 2005, a day after she was taken to a hospital.

“We spend $98 million annually to provide medical care for people in our custody,” Ms. Zuieback said. “Anybody who violates our national immigration law is going to get the same treatment by I.C.E. regardless of their medical condition.” (Jamie Zuieback, a spokeswoman for the Department of Homeland Security)]]> Tue, 26 Jun 2007 15:36:00 EDT http://jbanerjee.tigblog.org/post/223567 18.975 72.825833318.97572.8258333 US mililtary would rather employ a felon than a gay man http://jbanerjee.tigblog.org/post/216433
Stephen Benjamin wrote an excellent Op-Ed in the NYtimes today. The military read through his instant messages and kicked them out for being gay. The other 68 heterosexual men's instant messages contained conversations about their sexual misconduct, mysoginistic comments, profanities, etc. They were not kicked out.

I bet some of them were the same types as the Abu Ghraib torturers whose sexual misconduct was a grotesque aberration. But Bush and his cronies defend torture. How on earth can the Bible be against homosexuality but pro Torture?

When will this country get its priorities straight?

Don’t Ask, Don’t Translate
By STEPHEN BENJAMIN
Published: June 8, 2007

"In response to difficult recruiting prospects, the Army has already taken a number of steps, lengthening soldiers’ deployments to 15 months from 12, enlisting felons and extending the age limit to 42. Why then won’t Congress pass a bill like the Military Readiness Enhancement Act, which would repeal “don’t ask, don’t tell”? The bipartisan bill, by some analysts’ estimates, could add more than 41,000 soldiers — all gay, of course."
]]> Fri, 08 Jun 2007 15:07:00 EDT http://jbanerjee.tigblog.org/post/216433 18.975 72.825833318.97572.8258333 CNN's White Supremacist Lou Dobbs Provokes Unfounded Leprosy Hysteria http://jbanerjee.tigblog.org/post/212339
Reflecting the current widespread trend of the government/media to create and flame public fears about non-whites and immigrants, the audience for his program has grown 72 percent since 2003.

Lou Dobbs and his peons stated multiple times that there had been 7,000 cases of leprosy in this country over the previous 3 years, compared to 900 cases over the past 40 years.

Interestingly, according to the NYTimes,
"When Lesley Stahl of “60 Minutes” sat down to interview Mr. Dobbs on camera, she mentioned the report and told him that there didn’t seem to be much evidence for it.

'Well, I can tell you this,' he replied. 'If we reported it, it’s a fact.'"

HOWEVER- official leprosy statistics show about 7,000 diagnosed cases — but that’s over the last 30 years, not the last three.

Sadly any white racist can spin lies as truth and before you know it, half of America accepts it as truth. We can only pray that Lou Dobbs soon goes the way of Jerry Falwell..........


Source:
Truth, Fiction and Lou Dobbs, NEW YORK TIMES

By DAVID LEONHARDT
Published: May 30, 2007
]]> Wed, 30 May 2007 18:32:00 EDT http://jbanerjee.tigblog.org/post/212339 18.975 72.825833318.97572.8258333 Randall Tobias Rethinks the 'Ho' http://jbanerjee.tigblog.org/post/197285
Bush's appointee to US Global AIDS Coordinator Randall Tobias resigns after being caught on a list of clients of a famous high-end brothel/ escort service.

Tobias is the main man responsible for trying to get all aid orgs seeking US funds or partnering with orgs that receive US funds, to sign a pledge opposing commercial sex work (cuz that's going to do a hell of a lot!).

Who put the H in hypocrisy.............. the United States of America!


Written by one of my heroes............


Tobias Latest Evidence of Bush Hypocrisy
RH Reality Check
http://www.rhrealitycheck.org/blog/2007/04/30/bush-official-randall-tobias-resigns
Jodi Jacobson , CHANGE on
April 30, 2007 - 12:00pm


Excerpts:

....
In the far-rights' anti-science, always fiction world, you should never have sex, unless you
are a married heterosexual willing to do so only at risk of getting pregnant. Others—sexually active unmarrieds, gay, lesbian and transgender persons, and anyone else outside the "norm"—are subject to reprogramming. So since the Bush Administration wants a video cam in every bedroom and uterus (and I have no idea whether Tobias was taping his masseuses but that is another story), it is fair to ask if these guys are practicing what they preach. Apparently not.

...

Abstinence is big in U.S. global AIDS policy, which one colleague dubbed the
"Americans for Stopping Sex in Africa League." Billions of dollars have been
spent in a fruitless effort at home and abroad to spread a hyper-moralistic
and ideological message to everyone and sundry. Programs teaching people
sexual negotiation and safer sex methods have become as scarce as rubbers in
Uganda. Even sex workers in Asia and Africa are being told to abstain.
(Don't ask me.....it's in the program guides.)


.......... He has repeatedly testified before Congress supporting these policies, regularly using faulty data to support his claims. Under the "ABC" policy as developed under Tobias' watch, some 11 million people in sub-Saharan Africa have been subject to abstinence-only-until marriage programs, receiving no information, training, or methods to
practice safer sex, despite the fact that unprotected sex is responsible for 80 percent of new infections in that region. Condoms have been re-stigmatized and in some programs paid for by your tax dollars teens actually are told they will go to hell for having sex.

...
In a saner world, the U.S. government would not be known for its fundamentalist
"tighty-whities-in-a-twist" approach to sex.

But we don't live in that world. In our world, people with wealth, money,
and power get away with "special massages," they make unrealistic rules for
other people and set their own for themselves. And those at greatest risk of
life-threatening infections and engaged in a fundamental daily life struggle
to survive are punished in the interest of moralism. Give me some real
science fiction any day.
]]> Fri, 04 May 2007 18:49:00 EDT http://jbanerjee.tigblog.org/post/197285 18.975 72.825833318.97572.8258333