Hi guys,

My first case study is one concerning Ethiopia. This case study is about the current drought in Ethiopia. This drought is the worst drought Ethiopia has experienced in 50 years. Ethiopia is currently the second most populous country in Africa. They have lost 50-90% of their crop production due to the El Nino causing them to get dry wind from the Sahara Desert. Ethiopia is not going to get any rain until the El Nino disturbance in normal wind flow stops. The El Nino is projected to last at least until the beginning of the summer (though this particular El Nino is stronger than any on record). Despite the need for help, Ethiopia’s aid deadline is about to run out and Ethiopian government officials are asking for more monetary donations to provide food for their citizens. Ethiopia is a quickly developing country (if we were watching the Ted Talks by Hans Rosling, we would see it moving toward higher life expectancy very rapidly), but its development is almost entirely agricultural based. With the El Nino, Ethiopia has lost most of its progress and now can only support a small margin of its population without help. To overcome this issue, Ethiopia is investing all available resources to help with sustaining what little agriculture is left and prepare to help accelerate agriculture after the El Nino is over and this growing season starts. They simply need some help to sustain them until they are able to start in the next growing season. Read more at: http://allafrica.com/stories/201602101046.html. I found even more information at: http://reliefweb.int/report/ethiopia/fao-ethiopia-el-ni-o-response-plan-2016.

AIDS have been a problem for many years in parts of Africa, but it has also been a growing problem in Thailand. This case study describes the new conditions of AIDS in Thailand, and how they are dealing with it. Many statistics on AIDS in Africa show how problematic this virus can be. They estimate the life expectancy in Sub-Saharan Africa would rise 15 years if AIDS did not plague this area. In Thailand, a 1989-1991 study has found the proportion of (male) prostitutes with AIDS in Thailand had gone from 2.5% to 21.6% in the two years of this study. The proportion of men tested for AIDS during conscription went from .5% to 3% in this same time period. I believe this problem is caused by a correlation that was not well highlighted the health disparities reading assignment in this chapter: the correlation between education and disease. I do not know much about the education in Thailand in the 70s and 90s, but disease and sickness tends to be more easily prevented with higher education about sickness and disease. This is wrapped up in the intervention of the Thai government: the Thai government began educating the public on STIs, providing more public tests for STIs, and providing free condoms. The police began going to sex establishment owners of men that were being treated for AIDS to educate them about AIDS. Read more at: http://www.cgdev.org/page/case-2-preventing-hiv-and-sexually-transmitted-infections-thailand.

The first case is very similar to the Dust Bowl in the ‘30s. The United States used to be a primarily agricultural country. Much of our development was based on agriculture at this time. The weather (and our poor farming practices) caused a large setback in our development and a large hit to our population’s food security. Two main differences between these two situations are that we still had usable land in our country to rely on where Ethiopians do not, and to a large degree, Ethiopia has been able to avoid deaths through proper allocation of resources and receiving help from other countries and organizations. The second case study reminds me of growing up in Hagerstown, Maryland. Hagerstown used to have an enormous underage sex problem causing rapid spread of STIs. This inspired a push towards education to prevent these things. Some years later, when I was in primary school, I had to take a sex ed. Class every year to learn about sexually transmitted diseases and such topics. This has had large impacts on our city. The primary difference between these two developments is that Hagerstown relied on a long-term method where Thailand officials were more aggressive with short-term methods (going directly to the people in charge of prostitution, and giving out free condoms to everyone).

 – Ralph Diaz