AFP: Fate of US aid worker a mystery two months on, say officials My news about Cyd Mizell may have been premature. We can hope, at least.
Relevant article: BBC list of foreigner kidnappings in Afghanistan.
Author: Alanna Shaikh
Two on Tuesday – Tuberculosis
Yesterday was world TB Day. In honor, I’ll offer two resources about multi-drug resistant Tuberculosis. MDR TB is very very scary. It also shows the challenges of any kind of health treatment program. It’s hard to keep patients in engaged in a long course of treatment and it is highly infectious.
This article talks about MDR TB in the Kyrgyz Republic. As an added bonus, using an x-ray to diagnose TB, as described in the article, is not all that accurate. You can’t identify specific strains. You really need sputum smear microscopy to make it work.
For more information on MDR TB, you can check the WHO MDR TB report. I attended the presentation of the report in DC and it’s both seriously researched and as frightening as one would expect.
An addendum: Another interesting TB document: notes on communicating with the media about TB. The WHO did a brilliant job of this, as their fairly dry report on a technical medical topic got all kinds of news coverage, including the New York Times.
VOA News – US Radio Talk Show Personalities to Sudan With ‘Sacks of Hope’
US Radio Talk Show Personalities to Sudan With Sacks of Hope. I’ve been trying to write an entry about this for more than I week now. I give up. Read it and arrive at you own conclusions.
Trauma, kidnap and death (Iraq)
Trauma, kidnap and death: all in a day’s work for journalists in Iraq. I spent a week in Baghdad last year. It was minor, really – from the airport to our compound, from our compound to the green zone, from our compound to the airport again and put. I ate amazing meals prepared by the live-in cook (an IDP) and talked to the Iraq country team. It was the scariest thing I ever did, and it was nothing – absolutely nothing – compared to what the US military and the Iraqi people go through.
This article really resonated with me; the author struggled with the same feelings I did. Like you’re not allowed to be traumatized because your risk was so minor. Which it was. But…
I would, I think, have stayed in Iraq if I wasn’t a mother. We were doing good relief work there, and there was a vivid and immediate sense of why the work mattered. Time magazine has a nice article about the need for more humanitarian work in Iraq. Agron Ferati, who is quoted, is brave and brilliant and I worry about him all the time.
The Cute Cat Theory of technology
The Cute Cat Theory Talk at ETech. Wow, do I love Ethan Zuckerman’s blog. His approach to blogging is similar to mine, in that he tries to bring together a lot of ideas to improve development practice in the field. He does it a lot better, though, and writes meaty posts full of interesting analysis.
This post, on the use of new technologies, is one of the most insightful things I’ve read in a long, long time.
How I got fired
I’ve got a new post up at Damsels in Success, about getting fired from my first job. It has nothing to do with international development, but I’m pleased with it nonetheless.
I’ve had an odd career trajectory, but it’s one I am generally very pleased with. I think that having had many jobs, and many different kinds of jobs, lets me bring a perspective to international development that someone on a less circuitous path might not have.
Project HOPE’s blog
Project HOPE In the Field is Project HOPE’s blog. It’s a nice effort on their part, in terms of what’s on there. Appealing first-person content, with plenty of action photos. It’s not sanctimonious or stuffy and not gratuitous with beneficiary pictures. It has a donate link after every entry to let you support the exact work you are reading about.
But here’s the thing – it’s hosted on blogger, of all places, using an only slightly modified template. You’d think it was just one volunteer’s effort if not for the official links and pictures. It looks amateurish.
If they are going to the effort of having an official blog, why not incorporate the blog into their main site? It would give people a reason to keep coming back to the site, and I would bet that every visit increases the chance that someone will donate. They must have a web designer; it wouldn’t be that hard to have them build in a blog and appropriate functionality.
It’s a very strange choice. Old-fashioned, and out of touch with how people actually use the web.