Nurses Without Borders: The History of Nursing as U.S. International History

2011 ◽  
Vol 19 (1) ◽  
pp. 78-102 ◽  

During World War I and its aftermath, thousands of U.S. nurses put their domestic careers on hold to work overseas. Many volunteered in the wake of war and disaster. Others worked as instructors in nursing schools and as the staff of fledgling public health agencies. This article charts the international travels of four especially mobile nurses, whose globetrotting careers took them to Europe, Asia, and the Caribbean. These women aspired to tackle world health issues, motivated by the conviction that the spread of U.S. professional nursing ideas stood to modernize the world. This article tells these nurses' stories and analyzes their ideologies of development and progress. In so doing, it demonstrates that professional women, working outside state channels, played a principal role in expanding U.S. influence in the world. Moreover, it makes the case for the centrality of nursing history to the history of U.S. foreign relations.

Author(s):  
Petr Ilyin

Especially dangerous infections (EDIs) belong to the conditionally labelled group of infectious diseases that pose an exceptional epidemic threat. They are highly contagious, rapidly spreading and capable of affecting wide sections of the population in the shortest possible time, they are characterized by the severity of clinical symptoms and high mortality rates. At the present stage, the term "especially dangerous infections" is used only in the territory of the countries of the former USSR, all over the world this concept is defined as "infectious diseases that pose an extreme threat to public health on an international scale." Over the entire history of human development, more people have died as a result of epidemics and pandemics than in all wars combined. The list of especially dangerous infections and measures to prevent their spread were fixed in the International Health Regulations (IHR), adopted at the 22nd session of the WHO's World Health Assembly on July 26, 1969. In 1970, at the 23rd session of the WHO's Assembly, typhus and relapsing fever were excluded from the list of quarantine infections. As amended in 1981, the list included only three diseases represented by plague, cholera and anthrax. However, now annual additions of new infections endemic to different parts of the earth to this list take place. To date, the World Health Organization (WHO) has already included more than 100 diseases in the list of especially dangerous infections.


2020 ◽  
pp. 1-11
Author(s):  
Robin ROOM ◽  
Jenny CISNEROS ÖRNBERG

This article proposes and discusses the text of a Framework Convention on Alcohol Control, which would serve public health and welfare interests. The history of alcohol’s omission from current drug treaties is briefly discussed. The paper spells out what should be covered in the treaty, using text adapted primarily from the Framework Convention on Tobacco Control, but for the control of trade from the 1961 narcotic drugs treaty. While the draft provides for the treaty to be negotiated under the auspices of the World Health Organization, other auspices are possible. Excluding alcohol industry interests from the negotiation of the treaty is noted as an important precondition. The articles in the draft treaty and their purposes are briefly described, and the divergences from the tobacco treaty are described and justified. The text of the draft treaty is provided as Supplementary Material. Specification of concrete provisions in a draft convention points the way towards more effective global actions and agreements on alcohol control, whatever form they take.


Author(s):  
Volodymyr Holovko ◽  
◽  
Larysa Yakubova ◽  

The key problems of nation- and state-building are revealed in the concept of the chronotope of the Ukrainian “long twentieth century,” which is a hybrid projection of the “long nineteenth century.” An essential feature of this stage in the history of Ukraine and Ukrainians is the realization of the intentions of socioeconomic, ethnocultural and political emancipation: in fact, the end of the Ukrainian revolution, which began in the context of World War I and the destruction of the colonial system. The third book tells about the contradictions of post-Soviet transit. The three modern revolutions, the development of “oligarchic republics,” the subjectivization of Ukraine in the world through self-awareness of the European choice are visible manifestations of the final stage of the century-old Ukrainian revolution and anti-colonial liberation war. The essential transformations of the Ukrainian project are understood in the broad optics of post-totalitarian transit, the successful completion of which now rules for the national idea of Ukraine. For a wide audience.


Author(s):  
Pavitra Solanki ◽  
Yasmin Sultana ◽  
Satyavir Singh

Everybody is at risk of being infected by drug-resistant microscopic organisms. Managing with sickness has never been less demanding within the history of our species. At the current rate of antimicrobial resistance (AMR) in microbes, specialists foresee that battling infections tuberculosis, HIV, and intestinal sickness will become more complicated. Antimicrobial resistance is rendering numerous life-saving drugs useless. Antibiotic-resistant microbes, known as “superbugs,” are getting to be more various and more harmful, thanks to the proceeding abuse of anti-microbials. Natural medication offers an alternative to these progressively ineffectual drugs. According to the World Health Organization (WHO), traditional medicine is a holistic term enclosing diverse health practices. Concurring to a report by the College of Maryland Therapeutic Center, turmeric's volatile oil serves as a common anti-microbial.


Leprosy ◽  
2020 ◽  
pp. 1-19
Author(s):  
Charlotte A. Roberts

This chapter introduces leprosy, an infection that is still misunderstood and considered a neglected tropical disease but declining in frequency, according to the World Health Organization. The bacteria that cause leprosy, Mycobacterium leprae and Mycobacterium lepromatosis, are outlined, as well as how a relative strength of a person’s immune system determines how leprosy affects the body. Although leprosy is curable, associated stigma and disability remain common challenges for people with the disease in parts of the world. The goals and structure of the book are outlined, ten myths that still pervade society at large are listed, and the use of the word “leper” discussed. Based on World Health Organization data, the chapter also explores the frequency of leprosy today, where the infection remains a challenge, and the history of detecting and reporting evidence for leprosy in living populations. Finally, the reasons why bioarchaeologists have an interest in this infection are explored.


2017 ◽  
Vol 08 (01) ◽  
pp. 140-142 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mehmet Onur Yüksel ◽  
Mehmet Sabri Gürbüz ◽  
Osman Tanrıverdi ◽  
Sevilay Akalp Özmen

ABSTRACTLipomatous meningiomas are extremely rare subtypes of benign meningiomas and are classified as metaplastic meningioma in the World Health Organization classification. We present a 77-year-old man presented with the history of a gradually intensifying headache for the last 3 months. A right frontoparietal mass was detected on his cranial magnetic resonance imaging. The patient was operated on via a right frontoparietal craniotomy, and histopathological diagnosis was lipomatous meningioma. Distinctive characteristics of lipomatous meningiomas were discussed with special emphasis to importance of immunohistochemical examinations, particularly for its differentiation from the tumors showing similar histology though having more aggressive character.


2020 ◽  
Vol 48 (8) ◽  
pp. 030006052093894
Author(s):  
Amporn Atsawarungruangkit ◽  
Jin Yuan ◽  
Takamitsu Kodama ◽  
Ming-Tai Cheng ◽  
Mohammad Mansouri ◽  
...  

Background The outbreak of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) began in December 2019 and continues to spread worldwide. Rapid and accurate identification of suspected cases is critical in slowing spread of the virus that causes the disease. We aimed to highlight discrepancies in the various criteria used by international agencies and highly impacted individual countries around the world. Methods We reviewed the criteria for identifying a suspected case of COVID-19 used by two international public health agencies and 10 countries across Asia, Europe, and North America. The criteria included information on the clinical causes of illness and epidemiological risk factors. Non-English language guidelines were translated into English by a co-author who is fluent in that particular language. Results Although most criteria are modifications of World Health Organization recommendations, the specific clinical features and epidemiological risks for triggering evaluation of patients with suspected COVID-19 differed widely among countries. The rationale for these differences may be related to each country’s resources, politics, experience with previous outbreaks or pandemics, health insurance system, COVID-19 outbreak severity, and other undetermined factors. Conclusion We found no consensus regarding the best diagnostic criteria for identifying a suspected case of COVID-19.


Author(s):  
Michael A. Krysko

Technology is ubiquitous in the history of US foreign relations. Throughout US history, technology has played an essential role in how a wide array of Americans have traveled to and from, learned about, understood, recorded and conveyed information about, and attempted to influence, benefit from, and exert power over other lands and peoples. The challenge for the historian is not to find where technology intersects with the history of US foreign relations, but how to place a focus on technology without falling prey to deterministic assumptions about the inevitability of the global power and influence—or lack thereof—the United States has exerted through the technology it has wielded. “Foreign relations” and “technology” are, in fact, two terms with extraordinarily broad connotations. “Foreign relations” is not synonymous with “diplomacy,” but encompasses all aspects and arenas of American engagement with the world. “Technology” is itself “an unusually slippery term,” notes prominent technology historian David Nye, and can refer to simple tools, more complex machines, and even more complicated and expansive systems on which the functionality of many other innovations depends. Furthermore, processes of technological innovation, proliferation, and patterns of use are shaped by a dizzying array of influences embedded within the larger surrounding context, including but by no means limited to politics, economics, laws, culture, international exchanges, and environment. While some of the variables that have shaped how the United States has deployed its technological capacities were indeed distinctly American, others arose outside the United States and lay beyond any American ability to control. A technology-focused rendering of US foreign relations and global ascendancy is not, therefore, a narrative of uninterrupted progress and achievement, but an accounting of both successes and failures that illuminate how surrounding contexts and decisions have variably shaped, encouraged, and limited the technology and power Americans have wielded.


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