Thursday night lectures

Every Thursday night, I attend a lecture given by Dra. Santivañez to a group of CFHI students. The first week we went over health care and insurance in Bolivia, then we covered malnutrition, hip displasia, and (tonight) tuberculosis. All of the lectures have been extremely helpful to me, and I would have written more about it if I didn't think that it would bore most of you to tears. I mention it today because it was (a) the last one, (b) I was the only student there, and (c) I hadn't thought about it before, but I really hope I don't come home with TB.

I did a little more research after the lecture tonight, and here are the numbers I found from the WHO for 2007.


USAID also has a profile on TB in Bolivia which states that it "ranks third in the Western hemisphere in tuberculosis cases." The picture I took to the above left is at Hospital Los Andes. It basically says that treatment is free if you have tuberculosis (which is true). Unfortunately, people start to feel better a month or two into treatment and stop taking their medication... which is why it remains a big problem here and the free coverage program has had varied results over the years. Public health is fascinating to me, but I'm not sure if I could work in it for reals... at least not from a top-down approach. I'm much better at building up.

As my time is drawing to a close with this blog, I realize that I have taken photos of things that I meant to write about or mention, but haven't yet. So please forgive the haphazard transition from "serious tuberculosis discussion" to "things I think are silly."

It took me a week to realize what my association with "hipermaxi" was... but when I did, I had to take the picture. There is no way that a Bolivian would realize that most American women might think that "hipermaxi" is a brand of sanitary napkins, but that's the beauty of life in general, no?

Also note the ridiculous amount of power lines in the hiper maxi photo. The power/telephone lines are dense here, and that wouldn't be remarkable except that they also hang pretty low (at least for me, since I'm so tall here). More specifically, there are ones that hang down. For three weeks now, I have avoided the hanging cord a couple blocks from my building (I blurred the edges of the photo to the right to draw attention to the line... but it's still hard to see). Yesterday, I finally saw someone run into it and they didn't die! It was an exciting moment.

And finally, more spectacular signage. It reminds me of the restaurant "Cuteness," only this isn't even remotely fake. Babe looks so delicious when you put him next to a dead picture of himself.