My anger over the growing problems of Armenia’s most important natural resource, Lake Sevan, is hitting a boiling point. I am always overjoyed when I finish my climb from either the Dillijan Valley or the Ararat Valley and I am met with the beauty of Lake Sevan. However, her beauty is only skin deep.
I even add a category for it today!
The Foreign Ministry, according to Regnum, has asked Armenian citizens to not visit Turkey until this is all sorted out.
RFE/RL covered this situation yesterday as well:
Officials said the government in Yerevan has imposed a complete ban on poultry imports, introduced mandatory sanitary controls on Armenia’s border crossings and ordered the Armenia customs to check every piece of luggage arriving from Turkey.
Hunting for them [wild birds] has therefore been banned as part of the latest measures taken by the Armenian government.
We’re*not*freaking*out*yet.
Regnum, (not the most reliable source for news), reports today that the Armenian goverment is going to buy 50,000 bird flu vaccination.
[source]
I’m still worried, though. A Turkish chicken sneezes, it carries through the air, and an Armenian chicken gets sick.
So, a little knowledge gathering is probably in order… Wikipedia is my first stop.
What I learned:
- Vaccinations have to be set for each subtype. There doesn’t seem to be a 100% certain vaccine for the subtype, H5N1, found in Turkey.
- A Turkish doctor said this: “”People who have close contact with animals should receive special treatment but vaccination of the wider population is not necessary for now,” he said.”
- The people that got the virus in Turkey had birds in their home.
- It isn’t just chicken that people need to worry about. Flying birds carry the virus as well. A closed border means nothing, in this case.
So, we’ll continue keeping an eye on things. No freaking out yet.
Armenianow.com posted a little later than usual yesterday, so in case you haven’t looked at it yet, it has a number of stories on NGOs that are doing really good work. Even better — they aren’t all in Yerevan!
One especially interesting case is of an NK NGO that has trouble getting funding as NK isn’t recognized as a state. (Or maybe this was especially interesting to me because I am writing a paper on the statehood question for my international law class right now!)
Please check out ArmeniaNow for some really great stories of NGOs doing positive things.
On a related topic, I shared with a crowd at Onnik’s presentation in London, an excellent survey of NGOs in Armenia done by a wonderful scholar at the LSE, Dr. Armine Ishkanian. Here’s a publically free work of hers that may interest you if you’re curious about NGOs in Armenia. If you have access to a university’s library online database you can surely fine her longer works.
Onnik posts that the US Embassy sent out a warning about the cases of Bird Flu very close to the Armenian-Turkish border.
Embassy Yerevan Warden Message 1
The Turkish Ministry of Health has confirmed three positive tests of H5 avian influenza in humans in eastern Turkey –approximately 55 kilometers from the Armenian-Turkish border. Two of these cases have resulted in deaths. Press reports indicating other infections in Turkey have not been confirmed. At this time, it has not been confirmed that the recent illnesses in Turkey were caused by H5N1 strain of avian influenza, which has resulted in human deaths in Asia.
The Government of Armenia has stated that there are no confirmed cases of either bird or human avian influenza in Armenia.
Given the situation in neighboring Turkey, we recommend that American citizens avoid all contact with live poultry and wild birds and to avoid commercial or backyard poultry farms and live poultry markets.
Eek! When I was in Azerbaijan in December, I didn’t eat chicken for the same reason (chicken and fish are the only types of meat that I eat.) But with this being so close to the border, I’m a little freaked!
Be careful if you’re in Armenia right now!
Yet another tech toy that I love that doesn’t work in Armenia… sorry.
I came across a neat Google Earth interactive map of Bird Flu outbreaks.
With all of these really really really really close to Armenia outbreaks in the past few months, I thought it might be interesting to see really how close it is getting. Google Earth makes it seems not so close.
While I was playing around in Google Earth, I also saw a number of earth layers interesting to Armenophiles:
- ethnolingustic groups of the Caucasus
- Someone posted a placemark saying that Armenians are making nukes. What is this that s/he points to anyway? Another Google Earther thinks it is a fish farm. I can’t tell. If someone knows, please post a response on that page.
- Here’s a great look at Ararat.
I’d love to have the time to work on some of these.
Terrible mutations may turn humans into plants or animals
Is this April Fool’s Day?
Nope, it’s Pravda. (Literally and figuratively.)
Herbal cells may settle down and parasitize on the organism of a human or an animal
Geneticists say that mutations seriously change the set of chromosomes, and people with mutations can thus hardly be called humans. In Yerevan in the former Soviet republic of Armenia, 18-year-old girl Narine Aivasyan shocked doctors with her unusual disease. The girl complained about an abscess on her wrist that had been hurting her for a long period already. When doctors opened the bandage on Narine’s hand they saw two very thin thorns sticking out of the hand.
BAD TRANSLATION!The girl was fond of pot plants
and devoted much time to looking after her plants. Once, Narine pricked herself on a cactus while watering plants. Some thorns got stuck in her wrist. The parents immediately disinfected the wound but it still festered and even expanded. Narine was reluctant to visit a doctor. She had to go to a hospital in a month when a point of a thorn emerged on the skin right on the place of the red wound. Doctors easily removed the strange object, but more thorns turned up on the same spot soon.
What?
One day Narine noticed her wrist turned red once again but she would not confess to her parents that the disease reappeared. The girl felt her forearm swell and soon a thorn as thick as a match burst her skin.
What?
But it gets weirder — the next paragraph describes a baby born in Kazakhstan with hair all over his body. There is a name for this disease, but I don’t remember it.
The baby was covered with hair from top to toe. Only his cry resembling that of a normal baby proved that he was a human being.
This is the most insensitive statement!
The family lived in isolation, but neighbors soon learnt that a strange being resembling a monkey but speaking the human language was living next door.
Oh no!
Weird.
Youth beer? Does it have sugar in it our something to make it tastier for kids?
Did you know that in Armenian villages in the past, according to this article from Sweden, girls had to wear leather chastity belts? The whole thing sounds pretty unhygienic and barbaric. Anyone else heard about this? [recommendation: google searches for “chastity belt” bring about some interesting results. NSFW.]
Now that I’ve gotten your attention, here is something more important: the lack of sexual education in Armenia is creating greater risks for unwanted pregnancy, abortions, and sexually transmitted diseases (including HIV). (Not to mention a lot of naive young people!) In 2002, the reported number of legal abortions among adolescents in Armenia was 486: 483 cases of girls under 19 years old, and 3 cases of girls under 15 years old. [source] According to reports of the Ministry of Health, number of pregnancies and STDs among adolescents has significantly increased over recent years. [source] And according to the NGO “For Family and Health,” Among Armenian men, the self-reported incidence of trichomoniasis is 10% and the self-reported incidence of gonorrhea is 8%. Among Armenian women, the self-reported incidence of fungal infection is 15% and the self-reported incidence of trichomoniasis is 6%. The statistics are for adults.
[source]Sexual education remains an extremely sensitive, ‘closed’ topic in Armenian society. This is particularly true in rural areas, where most parents and adults do not discuss it, even among themselves. Parents are too shy to provide their own children with adequate information, leading young people to rely on what they learn ‘on the street’, from other children, or from television.
So, what is being done?
In 2002, a law on Reproductive Health and Reproductive Rights included a special section on “Protection of Reproductive Health of Adolescents.” According to this law, adolescents have rights to sex education in school and other educational institutions to increase their awareness about issues related to sexual development and health, as well as modern means of unwanted pregnancy, abortion, STDs/HIV/AIDS prevention. It is also states that adolescents have rights to sexual and reproductive health protection through access to best quality of youth-friendly health institutions and health care services. [source]
Sex education was supposed to be implimented in schools in September 2004. [source] Was it?
I’d love to conduct a survey of Armenian teenagers to find out what is being taught and if it meets the requirements of the law.
Arminfo reports that the Miss Caucasus 2005 contest in Yerevan will be held on July 16, and there’s even a possibility that Miss Baku will travel as well. Apparently, security guarantees were demanded by her parents and provided by the organizers. It will be cool if she wins the contest, too.
Says Arminfo:
To remind that the contest Miss Caucasus 2005 will take place in Yerevan on July 16. Beauties from Tbilisi, Vladikavkaz, Tskhinvali, Nalchik, Mineralniye Vodi, Essentuki, Pyatigorsk, Kislovodsk, Rostov on Don, Stavropol, Akhalkalaki and Stepanakert have arrived in the capital of Armenia already. The beauty contest “Miss Caucasus” is held in Yerevan for the first time. Armenia has been taking active part for the last two years. In 2003 Armenian participant Hermine Haroutunian took the first place. Nadezhda Hovhannisian represents Armenia this year
After the little discussion that occured after my first post about the CYMA blog, I wanted to share an interesting new posting from a young woman who is interning at a hospital. I think that her focus is oral medicine and dentistry. She writes with fun voice and seems to be a bit more mature than some of her co-bloggers.
I’m getting to see loads of cases of what they call “Flignoma” which I’ve deduced to be Cellulitis. This is where the tooth dies and all the dead tissue and inflammation spreads to the neck, causing a bulge. I’ve been able to sneak into the theatre when they have opened up the neck and drained the pus. No-one hardly ever gets this condition in the developed world, since patients will have gone to a dentists long before this happens.
Danger-wise, well…….it seems that the clinic uses formaldehyde to sterilise their equipment. This is a chemical that they use to preserve dead bodies and has been known to be carcinogenic!!!! I managed to hold my breath for a full 3 minutes after they opened the container!!!!!!! Also, gloves are only used on the rare occasion that blood is going to be encountered - in the operating theatre and during extractions.
Although the doctors here really know their stuff, I wish they were a bit more developed in the social aspect of patient treatment. The staff here are given upmost respect to the level that the patient is often discarded and left unattended. I find it really awkward when the Chief is flicking the patients nose when then are being operated on asking her if she is ok when its blatently obvious she is uncomfortable. I’ve seen no-one go under GA, even today when i saw a skin graft from abdomen to chin and during the cellulitis case even. The surgeons rely on the patient to inform them that they are in pain and this is when they provide anaesthetic - they even inject into pus!!!!
The difference beliefs and cultural implications of medical care have always interested me. I hope that Victoria continues to share her impressions via the blog.
UNICEF and World Vision Canada has started up a project, “Street Wise” in Georgia to teach vulnerable youth in a train-the-trainer type format about basic decision-making skills, life skills, sex education, and confidence building. The project will work with over 6000 young people, many of whom are in institutions and will soon be “out of the system.” The program is available for street kids, homeless children, chidren in institutions, and in vulnerable families.
The organizations working with this project seem to know what they’re talking about, specifically regarding the chance of these children becoming victims of trafficking and other criminal activities.
Here’s the article.
Sounds like a great project. I can only hope for success in Georgia so that the project may be repeated in Armenia.
Today, a fifty one year old man was buried. Sick with Multi Drug Resistant Tuberculosis (TB), he had been in and out of the Abovian TB Dispensary since god knows when. Although the law says that TB is treated free of charge, nothing is ever that simple in Armenia. At most hospitals, including in the capital, even if you shouldn’t have to pay, most of the time you generally do — for syringes, medication, informal payments to doctors and nurses, for any kind of treatment — you name it.
Full blog here.
Powered by WordPress