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Tag: prevention

  • Tsunami Debris Still Headed to US, Just No Island

    UPDATE: Nicholas Mallos, Ocean Conservancy’s marine debris specialist, said this with regard to clarifications from the NOAA about the reports of a “Texas-sized” island: “Following the 2011 tsunami that hit Japan a tremendous quantity of debris washed into the Pacific and began heading toward North America. While this debris was initially a solid mass, NOAA is right to indicate that it is not a flotilla and has dispersed significantly in the two years since.

    Tsunami debris is still a very real threat for which we must remain vigilant. What doesn’t reach land will likely end up in the North Pacific Subtropical Gyre with the myriad ocean trash already there due to our excessive use of disposable products. As a result, we’re communicating regularly with the Japanese government and environmental officials to ensure a swift response if or when debris makes landfall.”

    Main Story: In the spring of 2011, a massive tsunami/earthquake disaster struck Japan, killing roughly 15,000 and sweeping millions of artifacts and debris from Japanese cities into the Pacific Ocean.

    Earlier this year, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) was reportedly continuing their efforts to keep the North American coast and the island of Hawaii relatively free from debris, but artifacts like housing materials and styrofoam likely originate from the March 2011 tsunami.

    Nancy Wallace, the director of the marine debris program at NOAA, told LiveScience last March that “This has been a very unprecedented event… We just don’t know how much debris is still floating in the water.”

    The drama came to a climax this week when it was reported on multiple media outlets that an island of tsunami debris the size of Texas was on a crash-course with the West Coast.

    NOAA officials with the Marine Debris Program tried to calm the calamitous media with a blog post. “Here’s the bottom line:” they write. “There is no solid mass of debris from Japan heading to the United States.”

    The team went on, saying “While there likely is some debris still floating at sea, the North Pacific is an enormous area, and it’s hard to tell exactly where the debris is or how much is left. A significant amount of debris has already arrived on U.S. and Canadian shores, and it will likely continue arriving in the same scattered way over the next several years.”

    Essentially, there are too many unknowns and variables to calculate before anyone can make conclusions about aspects of the debris like the surface area. (“Texas”-sized, really?) Lots of debris has already arrived, anyway: at least a dock, a Japanese skiff, and 30 other items have washed up on beaches in Oregon, Washington, Hawaii, Alaska, and British Columbia. Some of those items had so much foreign marine life, they needed to be decontaminated lest we endure even more invasive species.

    Here’s some news footage from earlier this year of the cleanup efforts, which were still underway:

    [Image via Wikimedia Commons]

  • For First Time, U.N. Study Highlights Pacific-Asian Rape Culture

    A multi-country survey recently conducted by the U.N. of Asian countries near the South Pacific sheds a terrifying light onto rape culture as it exists in nations far less fascinating to the media than India.

    The abstract is here, and the study is to be published in the medical journal The Lancet. A little over 10,000 men were asked about their lives through a questionnaire that conveniently omits the words “rape” and “violence” because the researcher hypothesized that most men do not believe their actions amount to rape. Instead, questions were more carefully phrased like asking if the reader “had sex with a woman who was too drunk or drugged to indicate whether she wanted it” or if the reader ever “forced a woman who was not your wife or girlfriend at the time to have sex?”

    The numbers, frankly, will terrify and astonish for all the wrong reasons: on average, 24 percent of the men questioned admitted to raping a partner, while 10 percent admitted to subjugating an unwilling non-partner at least once. The overwhelming reason for these horrific acts of violence: sexual entitlement (also known as “the right to have sex”) at 73.3 percent, followed by boredom at 58.7 percent. 28.3 percent of respondents admitted to being multiple rapists, and 30.2 percent of respondents confessed to raping both men and women in a group (CNN notes that poor, uneducated men were statistically more likely to engage in violence in a group setting).

    Now, at this point, you must be wondering how many of these people were caught or punished for their violence. 35.7 percent claimed that friends or family chastised them where 32.5 percent said they were arrested. Only about 23 percent of respondents ever did time in a prison cell, and a remarkable 55.2 percent of respondents said they “felt guilty.” In countries like Sri Lanka, 96.5 percent of respondents got away with their crimes completely unpunished.

    Why should the rest of the world care about these statistics? The answer could not be more obvious: the people of these nations represent half the world’s population! At this rate, nearly one out of eight human men is predisposed to sexual violence.

    The Guardian spoke with Dr. Emma Fulu, who works with the Partners for Prevention, the UN-connected group that helped manage the study. Dr. Fulu called the work “unprecedented and ground-breaking,” saying that “this is really the first time we’ve had data on rape perpetration on this scale, not just in the region but in the world, and I think it probably suggests rape is more widespread than we had thought, and the perpetration of rape starts earlier than people perhaps thought, which really highlights the need to start working with younger boys and girls to stop the violence.”

    [Image via CNN’s terrifying graphical breakdown]

  • HIV Tests to Become More Routine

    HIV Tests to Become More Routine

    A recommendation from the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force (USPSTF) is expected to suggest that HIV screenings become routine. The USPSTF is an independent panel of physicians who are experts in preventive medicine. The task force uses evidence-based medicine to make recommendations about preventive services to primary care physicians. A Reuters report cites anonymous health officials close to the panel as saying the suggestion could change the current procedure, which allows doctors to decide whether to screen a patient for HIV. Under the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, colloquially known as “Obamacare,” insurance companies are required to cover services recommended by the USPSTF.

    While the CDC already advocates HIV testing for nearly all Americans, the USPSTF has stayed cautious on the issue, unsure of whether more testing should become a primary care method. The Reuters report quotes the USPSTF co-chair Dr. Michael LeFevre as stating new evidence has come to light in the last seven years. More specifically, there is now evidence that treating people infected with HIV can help prevent the spread of the Virus.

    Though nowhere near as widespread as in some places, such as Haiti or parts of Africa, HIV still poses a significant health risk to Americans. According to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), 1.2 million Americans have HIV, and one-fifth of those people (20%) don’t know they have it. The CDC estimates that 47,129 new cases of HIV were diagnosed in 2010.

    As methods for testing patients for HIV improve and become less expensive, more widespread testing is likely. The FDA just last month approved an over-the-counter HIV test. Dubbed the OraQuick, the test uses an oral swab and takes 30 to 40 minutes to produce results. The test could retail for as little as $60.

  • Facebook Announces Plan For Suicide Prevention Measures

    Facebook Announces Plan For Suicide Prevention Measures

    After the story broke this week of 31-year old Claire Lin, a depressed woman from Taiwan who killed herself after posting about a suicide attempt on Facebook for over an hour, the higher-ups within the social media company say they are moving towards a more preventative approach to users who are suicidal.

    Because we live in an society that is preoccupied with documenting every thought and idea online, Facebook has seen it’s fair share of depressed users; people tend to reach out via social media when thoughts of suicide begin to creep in, and those posts need to be taken seriously.

    Facebook’s current method of handling such a fragile situation is allowing anyone to report someone they believe to be suicidal based on posts they make; Facebook then messages that person to ask if they need help. They also offer resources for speaking to a suicide counselor.

    While this is a good approach to start, Facebook feels they need a better prevention method and have made a running start by partnering with specialists in the field, specifically targeting those who work with people who might be the most prone to depression, such as those in the LGBT community, bullied teens, and military veterans.

    “We’re working with other internet companies at formulating a list of best practices, so that there’s an understanding and a consensus, along with experts in the suicide prevention community, for online properties dealing with this issue,” Frederic Wolens, a Facebook spokesman, said.

    (image)@ChelseaBrowning
    Chelsea Browning    As an anti-bullying activist and Facebook employee, I’d say we are doing the best we can to help others & social media. http://t.co/7XfWrnUx(image) 54 minutes ago via Echofon ·  Reply ·  Retweet ·  Favorite · powered by @socialditto

    (image)@Ellisholic
    LADY CRÜEL    What about privacy protection, Facebook? RT @ABC #Facebook is taking a proactive stance against suicides. Find out how: http://t.co/mENTqFX3(image) 56 minutes ago via TweetDeck ·  Reply ·  Retweet ·  Favorite · powered by @socialditto

  • Facebook, Google Step Up Suicide Prevention During Holidays

    Depression is already a difficult monster to grapple with during any time of year, but holidays can exacerbate the intensity of that illness and, sadly, cause depressive individuals to contemplate suicide more seriously than usual. Blame the added stress of the holiday festivities, the increased despondence felt by absent family or friends, or the acute and insufferable awareness that you are not as joyful as those around you – whatever it is, the holidays can be brutal on a person vulnerable to depression.

    Given that online activity, whether through search engines or social media sites, has become so interwoven into the fabric of our lives, it shouldn’t come as a surprise that people with suicidal inclinations may resort to the Internet for support, information, or even assistance in trying to commit suicide. Acknowledging this phenomenon, Google and Facebook, perhaps the two largest online entities today, have taken steps to hopefully redirect people exhibiting thoughts of suicide.

    Although the service has been around since Spring 2010, Google will insert information about prevention for searches that indicate a person may be considering suicide. I tested this out and Googled several suicide-likely phrases (“how to kill myself,” “suicide,” and “I want to die”) in the search engine. Although I got different returns for each search, the following information for how to contact a suicide hotline was promoted at the top of my page every time:

    Unfortunately, that kind of information will only be displayed with Google.com, Google UK, and Google Australia. In a recent thread on HackerNews about depression, Google’s Matt Cutts responded to a post from a user that lamented the lack of suicide prevention information for other countries. While Cutts said that getting the numbers for different countries “might be tricky,” he did agree to pass the request on (though, really Google – how hard is that to do?)

    Facebook has implemented a more direct line of intervention by allowing users to now report suicidal content to Facebook. The social media site launched a new reporting service yesterday that will put users who post statements or material that indicates they could be suicidal in touch with a crisis counselor through a chat messaging system. A person must be reported by one of their friends before being contacted by a counselor, but after that they will be able to chat with a prevention specialist from the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline to receive assistance with their crisis.

    The process for reporting a potentially suicidal Facebook user isn’t exactly clear cut on their site as I couldn’t find any option that allowed me to report someone immediately. I ended up doing a search on Google for “how to report suicidal content facebook” and quickly found my way to this page:

    In addition to following the links for immediate assistance, by clicking on the link to report suicidal content to Facebook, a user will arrive at here:

    Additionally, here is the link for the page to report suicidal content on Facebook.

    If anyone you know has posted statements on Facebook that indicate they may be at risk for suicide, please do not hesitate to notify Facebook. Also, if anyone you know has expressed any intent to possibly commit suicide, do not hesitate to get them help.