Will this year’s Hajj become a “flashpoint” for the spread of the H1N1 virus?
The headline:
Swine Flu’s Impact on 7 Billion Dollar Hajj Industry
By Ashfaq Yusufzai
The link:
http://www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=48149
The snip:
An editorial in Pakistan’s authoritative Dawn newspaper, Aug. 12, paints a bleak picture. “The WHO warns that the number of cases will rise significantly … The rising figures have caused fears that the gathering of pilgrims in Saudi Arabia for Hajj this year will become a flashpoint for the spread of the virus. After some Muslim countries proposed a suspension of the annual pilgrimage, an estimated 7 billion dollar industry, Arab health ministers decided to bar individuals younger than 12 and over 65, and those with chronic illnesses,” it said.
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@ Alhamdulilah,
#2 is on the way? I’m guessing congratulations are in order!
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@ Rebecca,
Nice badge!
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that’s one thing when it comes to my mind i worry about for a little bit….. but hopefully everything goes smoothly.
I’ve been checking swine flu stats on the CDC website and Illinois is leading the nation in confirmed cases. This was not predicted by health authorities and seems inconsistent with adjoining states.
Why are the numbers so high for Illinois?
http://www.cdc.gov/h1n1flu/update.htm
The population of Illinois is 12 million people, making it the 5th most populous state in the U.S. 3 million of those people live in Chicago (interestingly, I make up one of those 3 mil).
There 204 cases of the flu in Illinois. According to my calculations, that is .0017% of the population of Illinois.
Or, 1 in 600,000.
How can you call that high?
Also consider that Chicago is home to O’Hare Airport, the hub of the Midwest for the whole world.
The 5 most populous states in the U.S. are: California, Texas, New York, Florida, and Illinois.
The 5 states with the highest incidences of Swine Flu are: California, Texas, New York, Illinois, and Massachusetts.
Perhaps a more mystifying question is: What the hell is going on with Florida and Massachusetts?!
You know something else interesting? The odds of winning 10,000 dollars in the Mega Millions Lottery is also around 1 in 600,000.
An increasing number of people are diagnosed with colon cancer and research studies are now underway on finding a treatment and ways on how best to prevent it from developing. Colon cancer usually starts in the large intestine and from dead cells that have been accumulated in a lump over a period of time. You are at greater risk to getting colon cancer if you have a genetic medical history of parents or close relatives who have been diagnosed with colon cancer. Research also showed that that colon cancer can be triggered by unhealthy diets such as processed foods.
Early detection is key to recovery. Hence, it is vital that you seek the advice of your doctor should you feel the discomfort of colon cancer symptoms. The symptoms to keep a watch for include unhealthy bowel occurrence such as diarrhea, constipation or bowel infection, severe pain in abdomen, blood in the stools, narrow stools, anemia and drastic loss of weight.
Obviously, it is best to adopt colon cancer prevention ways rather than be diagnosed and then seeking for a treatment for it. Here are 5 easy on how best to prevent colon cancer:
1.Instill healthy habits. Colon cancer usually takes time to develop. Hence you should not wait till you notice the symptoms of colon cancer before starting to adopt healthy habits. Healthy habits include having balanced diet, regular exercise and ensuring that you have an adequate amount of sleep.
Additionally, you should definitely think of including more fiber in your diet. Fat accumulates on the walls of the intestine and rectum. These form lumps of dead cells which can pose a threat to you. For fiber, ensure that your diet includes lots of green vegetables, fruits and water.
Make it a point to exercise a few times a week. Exercise is wonderful for flushing out harmful toxins and waste matter. If they are left accumulated in your body, the toxins can cause cancerous growth.
2. You should take note of your family medical history, since colon cancer is a genetic disease that is hereditary. If you really do belong to the high risk category due to your family history, then all the more you should take extra precautions by leading a lifestyle based on wellness.
3. Quit smoking. Chain smoking raises your chance to developing colon cancer. Inhaling tobacco can easily transfer carcinogen (a cancer agent) to your colon and rectum, thus resulting in colon cancer. Smoking also brings about many other health threats. Hence, you should quit smoking as a top priority.
4. Reduce exposure to radiation. Excessive exposure to radiation has been found to cause colon cancer. Radiation rays are harmful and can cause healthy normal cells to be abnormal. You should make it a point to avoid unnecessary X-rays, CT scans, mammograms.
5. If you find yourself having symptoms like eczema, frequent flu, allergies, weak immune system, poor movement of bowels, low energy levels, bloating, etc, then these signs may be indicative of too much toxins in your body. The only way to get rid of these toxins is to perform colon cleansing before they pose a problem. There are a few ways to perform colon cleansing; including consuming colon cleansing herbs and colon hydrotherapy. You can consult with a natural health expert for more detailed advice.
About the Author
Sandra Kim Leong writes on colon cleansing
. Her site also includes information on detox cleansing, detox diets, juice fasting, etc. For more article tips, please visit her site at http://www.detox-cleansing.com
which industries fund the news media mostly in your opinion? how open are they about this?
btw, which area of the world are you?
and what you think about this “Swine Flu” conspiracy theory floating around? is this on the news also? why would they come up with their own conspiracy theories against their funders in your opinion?
the government..
Akaash Singh- NYC, 9/11, Swine Flu Conspiracy Theory
Enemy of the State: Camp FEMA Part 2 is follow up to Williams Lewis’ and Gary Franchi’s eye-opening documentary,Camp FEMA: American Lockdown. Panics, orchestrated crises, media hype and propaganda have been used in the name of protecting the people for generations. Governments have resorted to this to further gain control over free populations. This happened most recently during the H1N1 Flu pande…
The U.S. government is now practically screaming that a new avian super-flu will likely kill millions of Americans. The mainstream media is entirely onboard, as are drug companies and other corporations poised to benefit immensely off the paranoia. But there is NO coming bird flu pandemic. It’s an elaborate scheme contrived by the government and big business for reasons that boil down to power and…
It’s flu season in the city, and Jersey has his own crazy ideas about how the bugs get around. But little does he know that on this particular morning, and during this particular bus ride, his conspiracy theories are about to become prophecy….
Nonnatus House was situated in the heart of the London Docklands. The practice covered Stepney, Limehouse, Millwall, the Isle of Dogs, Cubitt Town, Poplar, Bow, Mile End and Whitechapel. The area was densely populated and most families had lived there for generations, often not moving more than a street or two away from their birthplace. Family life was lived at close quarters and children were brought up by a widely extended family of aunts, grandparents, cousins and older siblings, all living within a few houses, or at the most, streets of each other. Children would run in and out of each other’s homes all the time and when I lived and worked there, I cannot remember a door ever being locked, except at night.
Children were everywhere, and the streets were their playgrounds. In the 1950s there were no cars in the back streets, because no one had a car, so it was perfectly safe to play there. There was heavy industrial traffic on the main roads, particularly those leading to and from the docks, but the little streets were traffic-free.
The bomb sites were the adventure playgrounds. They were numerous, a terrible reminder of the war and the intense bombing of the Docklands only ten years before. Great chunks had been cut out of the terraces, each encompassing perhaps two or three streets. The area would be roughly boarded off, partly hiding a wasteland of rubble with bits of building half standing, half fallen. Perhaps a notice stating DANGER — KEEP OUT would be nailed up somewhere, but this was like a red rag to a bull to any lively lad over the age of about six or seven, and every bomb site had secret entries where the boarding was carefully removed, allowing a small body to squeeze through. Officially no one was allowed in, but everyone, including the police, seemed to turn a blind eye.
It was undoubtedly a rough area. Knifings were common. Street fights were common. Pub fights and brawls were an everyday event. In the small, overcrowded houses, domestic violence was expected. But I never heard of gratuitous violence children or towards the elderly; there was a certain respect for the weak. This was the time of the Kray brothers, gang warfare, vendettas, organised crime and intense rivalry. The police were everywhere, and never walked the beat alone. Yet I never heard of an old lady being knocked down and having her pension stolen, or of a child being abducted and murdered.
The vast majority of the men living in the area worked in the docks.
Employment was high, but wages were low and the hours were long. The men holding the skilled jobs had relatively high pay and regular hours, and their jobs were fiercely guarded. Their skills were usually kept in the family, passed from father to sons or nephews. But for the casual labourers, life must have been hell. There would be no work when there were no boats to unload, and the men would hang around the gates all day, smoking and quarrelling. But when there was a boat to unload, it would mean fourteen, perhaps eighteen hours of relentless manual labour. They would start at five in the morning and end around ten at night. No wonder they fell into the pubs and drank themselves silly at the end of it. Boys started in the docks at the age of fifteen, and they were expected to work as hard as any man. All the men had to be union members and the unions strove to ensure fair rates of pay and fair hours, but they were bedevilled by the closed shop system, which seemed to cause as much trouble and ill feeling between workers as the benefits it accrued. However, without the unions, there is no doubt that the exploitation of workers would have been as bad in 1950 as it had been in 1850.
Early marriage was the norm. There was a high sense of sexual morality, even prudery, amongst the respectable people of the East End. Unmarried partners were virtually unknown, and no girl would ever live with her boyfriend. If she attempted to, there would be hell to pay from her family. What went on in the bomb sites, or behind the dustbin sheds, was not spoken of. If a young girl did become pregnant, the pressure on the young man to marry her was so great that few resisted. Families were large, often very large, and divorce was rare. Intense and violent family rows were common, but husband and wife usually stuck together.
Few women went out to work. The young girls did, of course, but as soon as a young woman settled down it would have been frowned upon. Once the babies started coming, it was impossible: an endless life of child-rearing, cleaning, washing, shopping and cooking would be her lot. I often wondered how these women managed, with a family of up to thirteen or fourteen children in a small house, containing only two or three bedrooms. Some families of that size lived in the tenements, which often consisted of only two rooms and a tiny kitchen.
Contraception, if practised at all, was unreliable. It was left to the women, who had endless discussions about safe periods, slippery elm, gin and ginger, hot water douches and so on, but few attended any birth control clinic and, from what I heard, most men, absolutely refused to wear a sheath.
Washing, drying and ironing took up the biggest part of a woman’s working day. Washing machines were virtually unknown and tumble driers had not been invented. The drying yards were always festooned with clothes, and we midwives often had to pick our way through a forest of flapping linen to get to our patients. Once in the house or flat, there would be more washing to duck and weave through, in the hall, the stairways, the kitchen, the living room and the bedroom. Launderettes were not introduced until the 1960s, so all washing had to be done by hand at home.
By the 1950s, most houses had running cold water and a flushing lavatory in the yard outside. Some even had a bathroom. The tenements, however, did not, and the public wash-houses were still very much in use. Grumbling boys were taken there once a week to have a bath by determined mothers. The men, probably under female orders, carried out the same weekly ablution. You would see them going to the bath-house on a Saturday afternoon with a small towel, a piece of soap, and a dour expression, which spoke of a weekly tussle once again waged and lost.
Most houses had a wireless, but I did not see a single TV set during my time in the East End, which may well have contributed to the size of the families. The pubs, the men’s clubs, dances, cinemas, the music halls and dog racing were the main forms of relaxation. For the young people, surprisingly, the church was often the centre of social life, and every church had a series of youth clubs and activities going on every night of the week. All Saints Church in the East India Dock Road, a huge Victorian church, had many hundreds of youngsters in its youth club run by the Rector and no less than seven energetic young curates. They needed all their youth and energy to cope, night after night, with activities for five or six hundred young people.
The thousands of seamen of all nationalities that came into the docks did not seem to impinge much upon the lives of the people who lived there. “We keeps ourselves to ourselves,” the locals said, which meant no contact. Daughters were carefully protected: there were plenty of brothels to cater for the needs of the seamen. In my work I had to visit two or three of them, and I found them very creepy places to be in.
I saw prostitutes soliciting in the main roads, but none at all in the little streets, even on the Isle of Dogs, which was the first landing place for the seamen. The experienced professional would never waste her time in such an unpromising area, and if any enthusiastic amateur had been rash enough to attempt it, she would soon have been driven out, probably with violence, by the outraged local residents, men as well as women. The brothels were well known, and always busy. I daresay they were illegal, and raided from time to time by the police, but that did not seem to affect business. Their existence certainly kept the streets clean.
Life has changed irrevocably in the last fifty years. My memories of the Docklands bear no resemblance to what is known today. Family and social life has completely broken down, and three things occurring together, within a decade, ended centuries of tradition — the closure of the docks, slum clearance, and the Pill.
Slum clearance started in the late 1950s, while I was still working in the area. No doubt the houses were a bit grotty, but they were people’s homes and much loved. I remember many, many people, old and young, men and women, holding a piece of paper from the Council, informing them that their houses or flats were to be demolished, and that they were to be rehoused. Most were sobbing. They knew no other world, and a move of four miles seemed like going to the ends of the earth. The moves shattered the extended family, and children suffered as a result. The transition also literally killed many old people who could not adapt. What is the point of a spanking new flat with central heating and a bathroom, if you never see your grandchildren, have no one to talk to, and your local, which sold the best beer in London, is now four miles away?
The Pill was introduced in the early 1960s and modern woman was born. Women were no longer going to be tied to the cycle of endless babies; they were going to be themselves. With the Pill came what we now call the sexual revolution. Women could, for the first time in history, be like men, and enjoy sex for its own sake. In the late 1950s we had eighty to a hundred deliveries a month on our books. In 1963 the number had dropped to four or five a month. Now that is some social change!
The closure of the docks occurred gradually over about fifteen years, but by about 1980 the merchant ships came and went no more. The men clung to their jobs, the unions tried to defend them, and there were numerous dockers’ strikes during the 1970s, but the writing was on the wall. In fact the strikes, far from protecting jobs, merely accelerated the closures. For the men of the area, the docks were more than a job, even more than a way of life — they were, in fact, life itself — and for these men, the world fell apart. The ports, which for centuries had been the main arteries of England, were no longer needed. And therefore the men were no longer needed. This was the end of the Docklands as I knew them.
The above is an excerpt from the book The Midwife: A Memoir of Birth, Joy, and Hard Times by Jennifer Worth. The above excerpt is a digitally scanned reproduction of text from print. Although this excerpt has been proofread, occasional errors may appear due to the scanning process. Please refer to the finished book for accuracy.
Author Bio Jennifer Worth, author of The Midwife: A Memoir of Birth, Joy, and Hard Times, trained as a nurse and then moved to London to become a midwife. She lives with her husband in Hertfordshire. They have two daughters and two grandchildren.
About the Author
To learn more about The Midwife: A Memoir of Birth, Joy, and Hard Times please visit http://us.penguingroup.com/nf/Book/BookDisplay/0,,9780143116233,00.html?The_Midwife_Jennifer_Worth
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