Filed under: africa, development, england, events, london, news, poverty, science, society
Karimba Primary School, by AP6.
Last week I was in London to report on the Royal Society of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene’s centenary conference, called, ‘Meeting the Millennium Development Goals’.
Professor Estambale from the University of Nairobi talked about whether preventing malaria in schoolchildren helped them learn better (you can read my story on it here).
He talked about the design of the study and his results. In explaining his figures for why not all the children recruited to receive treatment were tested afterwards, he said matter-of-factly, “three of them died”, and continued to explain why other children were not in the final figures.
I had one of those stop-life moments. Three of them died! Here was a man in London explaining his scientific results, just like so many other scientists, but he had to factor in that some of his study participants died. And this was in the group that received treatment! There were more in the placebo group. The deaths weren’t anything to do with his study – it’s just that in Africa, children die, for all sorts of reasons.
Of course we all know that children in Africa die all the time, but it was one of those moments that brought it home to me. I imagine all of the people I know working in science in developed countries who design studies, worrying about so many different factors, trying to recruit enough volunteers – imagine if some of them just died? Halfway through your study, they die for completely unrelated reasons, which you then factor into your results.
I guess it was also shocking because I associate African children dying as flyblown toddlers suffering from malnutrition, not school-age children, ready to sit tests at the end of the term so they can move on in life. I’ve never been a starving toddler (good work mum), but I have been a primary school kid cruising along through childhood, like the kids in the study.
It’s unimaginable that school kids could ever just die matter-of-factly in Western Europe. Needless to say, we have to stop it happening in other parts of the world.
Living in South Australia most of my life, I’m used to tales of strange killers lurking in surrounding areas, like Snowtown’s bodies in the barrels saga, and the murder of Peter Falconio.
But the next time a brit says something about deviants in the outback, I’m going to point out they don’t have a great track record themselves.
The dead women in Suffolk story has been slowly gathering in the British media, and with two more bodies found the storm has hit.
Geographically speaking, this killer is closer than any of the Australian ones were, but differing population densities mean Ipswich seems as close as Broome. So we’re safe as houses here in Cambridge.
The Times newspaper’s most prominent environmental story today is called “Why rap has become the music of choice for city high-flyers”.
The third sentence is “the study of great tits reveals that not only are they more raucous than their country cousins but will experiment with new sounds and arrangements.”
The story is about how bird calls differ in country and urban areas… of course.
I used to denigrate the the Adelaide Advertiser for its sexing up of science for publication.
But I take it back. Stories in the UK are much worse. I haven’t even read a copy of the Sun yet, Murdoch’s infamous London tabloid.
This morning was eerie.
I’m trying to get used to this humid but cold weather. It’s the worst of both worlds.
Calgary in Canada was freezing, but so dry that the second I left the cold I thawed out in a fiery flood of blood to the peripheries. There’s something satisfying about that kind of dry cold.
Here it’s cold – but damp. Some kind of orange mould grows on my cleanser bottle. I suppose I’m glad it’s not full of toxic chemicals, but it still seems like an oxymoron.
When I shower condensation in the bathroom battles with the frosty exterior, and water courses down the window panes like clear blood from a severed artery. Our toothbrushes and mouthwash on the windowsill live in an inescapable pool of runoff.
I appreciate Adelaide’s Mediterranean climate like never before.
This morning was humid and windy. So humid it seemed that I almost didn’t need my gloves and scarf over my coat, until a gust of wind and leaves hit me in the face, reminding me of the unpredictability of the weather here.
I cycled from my house to the bus stop along the River Cam, as usual. But today the river wasn’t clear and sparkling and there were no swans to greet me. The river was muddied and stagnant. I wondered if the gale winds the Met Office had been predicting had swept through overnight, dragging up sediment with it.
Reaching another part of the river I was stunned to see the punts grounded and abandoned, a few ducks puttering about in the mud, metres below the water line.
It occurred to me that perhaps this was normal – perhaps regularly in winter nasty weather comes along and decimates the River Cam. I’ve been lulled into a sense of familiarity with Cambridge over the last couple of months – perhaps there’s still much to learn.
Or perhaps with the changing climate it’s something long-time residents will have to confront as well.
Arriving at work, I asked if anyone knew what had happened to the River.
“Oh, some guys missing so they’re draining the river,” one of my colleagues said. I looked in the local paper and there was the story of the Jesus College graduate who went missing at 1am on Sunday morning, without a trace. His bike had been left locked up in town, his phone and wallet haven’t been used since then. Of course, he’s fallen in the river, so it’s being drained.
Never mind the ducks and swans, never mind the fish and other wildlife. A Cambridge graduate is missing!
“I hope it’s fixed by Saturday because I wanted to take my friend punting,” my colleague said.
In Australia getting more water in the river has become so critical it’s become political. Here a drunk lad falling in on Saturday night means the river must be dismantled.
It reminds me that in Europe people have been messing around with nature a lot longer than we have back home.
