Las epidemias en La Pampa (Argentina), en perspectiva histórica* / The epidemics in La Pampa (Argentina), from a historical perspective

Resumen Este artículo describe el inicio de las preocupaciones sanitarias vinculadas a las epidemias ocurridas durante el siglo XX en La Pampa, provincia argentina. Las epidemias, como las de la viruela, fueron un estímulo para estas políticas que frecuentemente tuvieron origen en Buenos Aires, la capital del país. El contagio de muchas epidemias dependía de carencias de infraestructura: agua, desagüe y desecho adecuado de basuras, de la ausencia de un número suficiente de trabajadores de salud, de la presencia de vectores transmisores de enfermedades como los mosquitos y, en última instancia, de la pobreza. La experiencia histórica descrita en este texto resalta la importancia de analizar el impacto del SARS-CoV-2 más allá de las grandes ciudades.

Abstract This article describes the emergence of health concerns relating to the epidemics that occurred during the twentieth century in La Pampa, a province in Argentina. Epidemics such as smallpox drove such policies, which frequently originated in Buenos Aires, the country's capital. The spread of many epidemics was due to shortages: water, sewage and adequate refuse disposal, an insufficient number of health care workers, the presence of disease transmission vectors such as mosquitos, and, ultimately, poverty. The historical experience described in this text highlights the importance of analyzing the impact of SARS-CoV-2 beyond the big cities.

[The epidemics in La Pampa (Argentina), from a historical perspective]. / Las epidemias en La Pampa (Argentina), en perspectiva histórica.

This article describes the emergence of health concerns relating to the epidemics that occurred during the twentieth century in La Pampa, a province in Argentina. Epidemics such as smallpox drove such policies, which frequently originated in Buenos Aires, the country's capital. The spread of many epidemics was due to shortages: water, sewage and adequate refuse disposal, an insufficient number of health care workers, the presence of disease transmission vectors such as mosquitos, and, ultimately, poverty. The historical experience described in this text highlights the importance of analyzing the impact of SARS-CoV-2 beyond the big cities.

Este artículo describe el inicio de las preocupaciones sanitarias vinculadas a las epidemias ocurridas durante el siglo XX en La Pampa, provincia argentina. Las epidemias, como las de la viruela, fueron un estímulo para estas políticas que frecuentemente tuvieron origen en Buenos Aires, la capital del país. El contagio de muchas epidemias dependía de carencias de infraestructura: agua, desagüe y desecho adecuado de basuras, de la ausencia de un número suficiente de trabajadores de salud, de la presencia de vectores transmisores de enfermedades como los mosquitos y, en última instancia, de la pobreza. La experiencia histórica descrita en este texto resalta la importancia de analizar el impacto del SARS-CoV-2 más allá de las grandes ciudades.

Building Community and Transforming Knowledge: Histories of Women's Health Practitioners and Community-Based Health Services in 20th-Century Alberta, Canada.

As new government health policy was created and implemented in the late 1910s and the late 1960s, women patients and health practitioners recognized gaps in the new health services and worked together to create better programs. This article brings the histories of the district nursing program (1919-43) and local birth control centres (1970-79) together to recognize women's health provision (as trained nurses or lay practitioners) as community-based and collaborative endeavours in the province of Alberta. The district nursing and birth control centre programs operated under different health policies, were influenced by different feminisms, and were situated in different Indigenous-settler relations. But the two programs, occurring half a century apart, provided space for health workers and their patients to implement change at a community level. Health practitioners in the early and late twentieth century took women's experiential knowledge seriously, and, therefore, these communities formed a new field of women's health expertise.

Occupational health responses to COVID-19: What lessons can we learn from SARS?

On 31 December 2019, the World Health Organization (WHO) received reports of pneumonia cases of unknown etiology in the city of Wuhan in Hubei Province, China. The agent responsible was subsequently identified as a coronavirus-SARS-CoV-2. The WHO declared this disease as a Public Health Emergency of International Concern at the end of January 2020. This event evoked a sense of déjà vu, as it has many similarities to the outbreak of severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) of 2002-2003. Both illnesses were caused by a zoonotic novel coronavirus, both originated during winter in China and both spread rapidly all over the world. However, the case-fatality rate of SARS (9.6%) is higher than that of COVID-19 (<4%). Another zoonotic novel coronavirus, MERS-CoV, was responsible for the Middle East respiratory syndrome, which had a case-fatality rate of 34%. Our experiences in coping with the previous coronavirus outbreaks have better equipped us to face the challenges posed by COVID-19, especially in the health care setting. Among the insights gained from the past outbreaks were: outbreaks caused by viruses are hazardous to healthcare workers; the impact of the disease extends beyond the infection; general principles of prevention and control are effective in containing the disease; the disease poses both a public health as well as an occupational health threat; and emerging infectious diseases pose a continuing threat to the world. Given the perspectives gained and lessons learnt from these past events, we should be better prepared to face the current COVID-19 outbreak.

Prenatal Provider Support for Breastfeeding: Changes in Attitudes, Practices and Recommendations Over 22 Years.

BACKGROUND: Prenatal care providers play a central role in breastfeeding outcomes. A survey on obstetricians' support of breastfeeding was conducted in 1993 in Monroe County, NY. Since the landscape of prenatal care and breastfeeding support has changed significantly in the past 2 decades, we repeated and extended this survey in 2015. RESEARCH AIM: To determine changes in breastfeeding support by prenatal care providers over a 20 year period. METHODS: We sent a 46-item on-line or paper questionnaire to all categories of prenatal care providers identified by an online search. A breastfeeding support score was created based on the prior survey, with a maximum score of 3. One point was awarded for: (1) personally discussing breastfeeding; (2) generally suggesting breastfeeding; and (3) commonly receiving questions from patients. Data were analyzed using Chi-square. RESULTS: We had 164 participants (response rate 80%). More current participants, compared to 1993, reported discussing (97% vs. 86%, p < .001) and recommending (93% vs. 80%, p = .001) breastfeeding. Only 10% of 2015 participants gave infant formula samples, compared with 34% in 1993 (p < .0001). Improvement in the support score was seen, with 98% of current participants having high scores compared to 87% in 1993 (p < .001). Similar numbers reported receiving breastfeeding education, though more reported that the education was inadequate (54% vs. 19%, p < .0001). CONCLUSION: Breastfeeding support improved significantly over time, even though breastfeeding education has not improved in quality or quantity. Improving education of prenatal care providers may help future providers be more prepared to support breastfeeding.

Behaviour change in diabetes: behavioural science advancements to support the use of theory.

Behaviour is central to the management of diabetes, both for people living with diabetes and for healthcare professionals delivering evidence-based care. This review outlines the evolution of behavioural science and the application of theoretical models in diabetes care over the past 25 years. There has been a particular advancement in the development of tools and techniques to support researchers, healthcare professionals and policymakers in taking a theory-based approach, and to enhance the development, reporting and replication of successful interventions. Systematic guidance, theoretical frameworks and lists of behavioural techniques provide the tools to specify target behaviours, identify why ideal behaviours are not implemented, systematically develop theory-based interventions, describe intervention content using shared terminology, and evaluate their effects. Several examples from a range of diabetes-related behaviours (clinic attendance, self-monitoring of blood glucose, retinal screening, setting collaborative goals in diabetes) and populations (people with type 1 and type 2 diabetes, healthcare professionals) illustrate the potential for these approaches to be widely translated into diabetes care. The behavioural science approaches outlined in this review give healthcare professionals, researchers and policymakers the tools to deliver care and design interventions with an evidence-based understanding of behaviour. The challenge for the next 25 years is to refine the tools to increase their use and advocate for the role of theoretical models and behavioural science in the commissioning, funding and delivery of diabetes care.

The Kirkbride buildings in contemporary culture (1850-2015): from 'moral management' to horror films.

The so-called 'Kirkbride Plan' is a type of mental institution designed by the American psychiatrist Thomas Story Kirkbride. The Kirkbride-design asylums were built from 1848 to the end of the nineteenth century. Their structural characteristics were subordinated to a certain approach to moral management: exposure to natural light, beautiful views and good air circulation. These hospitals used several architectural styles, but they all had a similar general plan. The popularity of the model decreased for theoretical and economic reasons, so many were demolished or reused, but at least 25 of the original buildings became protected places. Over the years, surrounded by a legendary aura, these buildings have become a leitmotif of contemporary popular culture: 'the asylum of terror'.

Health Care Providers in War and Armed Conflict: Operational and Educational Challenges in International Humanitarian Law and the Geneva Conventions, Part I. Historical Perspective.

Since 1945, the reason for humanitarian crises and the way in which the world responds to them has dramatically changed every 10 to 15 years or less. Planning, response, and recovery for these tragic events have often been ad hoc, inconsistent, and insufficient, largely because of the complexity of global humanitarian demands and their corresponding response system capabilities. This historical perspective chronicles the transformation of war and armed conflicts from the Cold War to today, emphasizing the impact these events have had on humanitarian professionals and their struggle to adapt to increasing humanitarian, operational, and political challenges. An unprecedented independent United Nations-World Health Organization decision in the Battle for Mosul in Iraq to deploy to combat zones emergency medical teams unprepared in the skills of decades-tested war and armed conflict preparation and response afforded to health care providers and dictated by International Humanitarian Law and Geneva Convention protections has abruptly challenged future decision-making and deployments. (Disaster Med Public Health Preparedness. 2019;13:109-115).

[Machines and artisanal health workers]. / Máquinas y arte-sanos.

This work discusses the dominant models and tensions within the health field regarding the conceptualization of the human body (as a machine), the process of health work (industrial and artisanal models), institutions (hospitals and health centers) and primary agents (the medical corporation and the medical industrial complex). The context of analysis is the United States from the end of the 19th century to the present. Economic-political, ideological-cultural, and scientific-technical dimensions are discussed, which permeate the historicity of the field. The purpose is to illustrate how the health field has transformed over time, as well as the role instrumental reason and financial capital has played in this process, to the detriment of relational aspects.

Este trabajo discute los modelos dominantes y las tensiones, al interior del campo de la salud, entre la concepción del cuerpo humano (máquina); el proceso de trabajo médico (modelos industriales o artesanales); las institucionalidades (hospitales y centros de salud) y los principales agentes (corporación médica y complejo médico industrial). El análisis se contextualiza en EEUU desde fines del siglo XIX a la actualidad. Se discuten dimensiones económico-políticas, ideológico-culturales y científico-técnicas, que atraviesan la historicidad del campo. El propósito es elucidar cómo se viene transformando el campo de la salud, y qué peso tiene la razón instrumental y el capital financiero en ese proceso, en detrimento de lo relacional.

"I Was Doctor": White Settler Women's Amateur Medical Practice in East and South-Central African Communities, 1890-1939.

Professional medicine in colonial British Africa has been extensively examined by historians. Few scholars, however, have adequately considered the role that white settlers without medical training played in the provision of colonial health care in local African communities. This article addresses the gap by exploring amateur medical treatment by white settler women in East and South-Central African communities between 1890 and 1939, primarily in highland areas of Kenya and Southern Rhodesia. It examines the types of conditions treated, what techniques and equipment were used for treatment, and where treatment was carried out. It also explores medical identity in settler women's memoirs. Last, it considers the degree of choice exercised by patients in these amateur medical encounters. Overall, this article situates white settlers' amateur treatment in African communities as an important strand of colonial health care and as an intimate contact zone between white settlers, colonial medicine, and local people.

Máquinas y arte-sanos / Machines and artisanal health workers

RESUMEN Este trabajo discute los modelos dominantes y las tensiones, al interior del campo de la salud, entre la concepción del cuerpo humano (máquina); el proceso de trabajo médico (modelos industriales o artesanales); las institucionalidades (hospitales y centros de salud) y los principales agentes (corporación médica y complejo médico industrial). El análisis se contextualiza en EEUU desde fines del siglo XIX a la actualidad. Se discuten dimensiones económico-políticas, ideológico-culturales y científico-técnicas, que atraviesan la historicidad del campo. El propósito es elucidar cómo se viene transformando el campo de la salud, y qué peso tiene la razón instrumental y el capital financiero en ese proceso, en detrimento de lo relacional.

ABSTRACT This work discusses the dominant models and tensions within the health field regarding the conceptualization of the human body (as a machine), the process of health work (industrial and artisanal models), institutions (hospitals and health centers) and primary agents (the medical corporation and the medical industrial complex). The context of analysis is the United States from the end of the 19th century to the present. Economic-political, ideological-cultural, and scientific-technical dimensions are discussed, which permeate the historicity of the field. The purpose is to illustrate how the health field has transformed over time, as well as the role instrumental reason and financial capital has played in this process, to the detriment of relational aspects.

Governing Dementia: A Historical Investigation of the Power of States and Professionals in the Conceptualization of Dementia in China.

This study intends to understand how Chinese states and healthcare professionals interact with each other in adopting biomedical concepts within the context of globalization of mental health. The conceptualization of dementia as a stigmatized mental disorder in China serves as a salient case to examine interactions between states and professionals as well as the interrelationships between different healthcare professionals in producing knowledge. By engaging the biopolitical approach, this project explores the historically-contingent conceptualizations of dementia, namely dementia as a vague and stigmatized condition in imperial China, dementia as biosocial deviance in Republican China, dementia as a product of capitalism during Mao-era China, and dementia as a stigmatized mental illness in contemporary China. These dynamics indicate that Chinese professionals have been largely influenced by state ideologies in assimilating biomedical concepts. Through the historical analysis of state-professional interactions in conceptualizing dementia, this study provides an avenue to understand how biomedical concepts transfer within the global context can be read as a site of power struggle between ethnomedicine and biomedicine, between various competing forms of healthcare professionals, and between indigenous sovereignty and governmentality. Moreover, the study of conceptualizing dementia in China sheds light on the larger sociopolitical processes of governmentality in China.

The Rise of the Surgeon in the Seventeenth Century Virginia Colony.

Life in the early American colonies presented unique challenges to the British colonists. There was an acute need for health-care providers in the early Virginia colony at Jamestown. Many of the medical men who first arrived at Jamestown were surgeons who adapted themselves to fit the medical needs of the community. These men trained in the British system where they sat beneath physicians in a hierarchy that did not consider surgeons to be doctors. Through their service to the colonists, early surgeons earned the reputation traditionally given to physicians in Great Britain. The colonists in Virginia respected the surgeons and viewed them as doctors, which allowed surgeons to stand on equal ground with physicians as the colonies grew to eventually become the United States of America.

Massacre of Canadian Army Medical Corps personnel after the sinking of HMHS Llandovery Castle and the evolution of modern war crime jurisprudence.

SUMMARY: Events after the sinking of the hospital ship Llandovery Castle on June 27, 1918, by the German submarine U-86 outraged Canadians. Survivors aboard a single life raft gave evidence that many of the 234 souls lost had made it to lifeboats but were rammed and shot by the submarine. Many of those who died were nurses. Three German officers were charged with war crimes after the war. The submarine's captain evaded capture. The remaining two officers' defence that they were following the captain's orders failed and they were convicted. This ruling was used as a precedent to dismiss similar claims at the war crime trials after the Second World War. It is also the basis of the order given to members of modern militaries, including the Canadian Armed Forces, that it is illegal to carry out an illegal order.

African-American Medical Personnel in the US Army in the First World War.

In WWI, the United States was segregated by custom and law, and the Army obeyed the laws, reducing opportunities for Black medical professionals to serve their country in uniform. This article surveys African-American medical personnel serving in the US Army in World War I. It includes physicians, dentists, veterinarians, and other commissioned officers, as well as medical enlisted men. Overall, despite segregation and associated professional limitations, determined individuals still served with distinction in a variety of roles, opening doors for future advances.

From Nuremberg to Guantanamo Bay: Uses of Physicians in the War on Terror.

Seventy years after the Nuremberg Doctors' Trial, health professionals and lawyers working together after 9/11 played a critical role in designing, justifying, and carrying out the US state-sponsored torture program in the CIA "Black Sites" and US military detention centers, including Abu Ghraib, Bagram, and Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. We analyze the similarities between the Nazi doctors and health professionals in the War on Terror and address the question of how it happened that health professionals, including doctors, psychologists, physician assistants, and nurses, acted as agents of the state to utilize their medical and healing skills to cause harm and sanitize barbarous acts, similar to (though not on the scale of) how Nazi doctors were used by the Third Reich.