Thursday, 25 January 2018

Tortured Colour Brazilian mothers by Zika virus

What I listened to / read

While I am drinking hot jasmine green tea, I look for some science news in The Huffington Post. My eyes stare at the news titled "Poor women of color bear the brunt of Zika burden in Brazil". I read only the title and feel great pressure taking on me,but there are a lot of questions appearing on my mind. Why does Zika virus involve Color women in Brazil?
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What it says

The HuffPost in Brazil Marcella Fernandes, gave a report on the life of color women in the rural region of Brazil. Those women have one of son/daughter in their family who have birth defects associated with Zika virus infection such as microcephaly (small head) and neurological diseases. they told that their life are very difficult since they are poor, low-profile of education or even illiterate, teenage pregnancy and live so far away from medical center. they always stayed at their home for being housewife and taking of their children especially son/daughter who is congenital Zika syndrome. Those children are physical disabilities and mental impairments leading the mothers have a large task and reduce herself time. Moreover, the social and medical assistant provided by the Brazilian government were too slow, sometimes lacking or even rejected their disability benefit applications as the worst. In term of Brazilian government, they did not only lack of responsibility to their people, but they also concealed both the number of those cases and the number of denied applications from public.
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My response 

It is hard to finish reading this article since it made my feeling goes negative emotion. As we know, Zika virus infection had been broken out of Brazil in 2015. In the same year, the researchers around the world especially NIH and WHO was found the correlation between birth defects and Zika virus infection, and they also introduced the measures against the outbreak of virus. these things seem to control the virus widespread ,stall the increase of the number of child with microcephaly and provide the treatment for recover the infant's symptoms. But, Why are Brazilian mothers still torment from the outbreak?

As Scientist's view, Zika virus can transmit from the mother to son via placental route once she was infected by mosquito's bite. the researcher had been found that Zika virus targets Neural stem cells of embryo during neurogenesis or brain development of embryo. the virus causes the inhibition of terminally neural differentiated genes and the activation of programmed cell death related genes such as  apoptosis or even necrosis, at worst. These occurrences leads to stall of brain development especially brain enlargement and neural circuit connection result in physical disabilities and mental impairment of infant. in this case, the medical team together with researchers will used a method called "early stimulation therapy" as a basic treatment to the child for activating those neural stem cells to break the arrest to differentiated to neurons and body will then automatically repair and connect the circuit again. this way takes time at least a decade. In some severe cases, there are a possible way that the doctor will clear the remnant of neural stem cells in child's brain to prevent tumourigenesis and virus migration. the cultured neural stem cells will be transplant to the brain again. this method are also effective and sustainable for child development.

Unfortunately, there are a lot of limitations especially political policy. If we look at Brazilian's government,  they are very dominate in corruption and have a high risk to turn into bankruptcy state. Base on those conditions, it is impossible to distribute the social and medical support throughout the country. There also have a very broad of the gap between people especially currency status and skin color. It is a truth that color people around the world still have a life quality under social standard. As Marcella told in the report, those mothers are poor, low educated and difficult to access to their benefits. these things lead them to less attention in medical support and understanding and how to take care of the disease which the family member is fighting. And because of concealing on number of Zika infected baby and benefit application rejection, the other nations cannot estimate the amount of money and utility which they transfer to Brazil leading to the unequal distribution.

Looking back to Thailand, I feel thanks you that I was born here. Thailand, excluding political instability, have a lot of benefits that we are easy to access especially medical care. In fact, Zika are well known virus for Thai medical research. Hence, every hospitals have a measure to fight with this disease. And even your child is Zika associated disability, you can take him/her to get their benefits both at the center under provision of the ministry of  public health or the minister of social development and human security. those minister will provide you both of medical care, social support ,education and financial aid to your family for taking care your child throughout his life. you do not only have a support from the government, but Thai people also always support you and your family because Thai characteristic is always merit, kind and love to help. That's why I said that I Thanks you myself.    

1 comment:

  1. I think that summary was a bit over the 100 word limit.

    Having just read New's post on gender and other differences in film preferences, I have to agree with Top that his chosen topic was a bit off-putting for so early in the day, but serious issues also need to be discussed.

    I think few things can be so sad as the discovery by new parents that there is a serious problem with their new-born child. Also like Top, I think that political failures are at least in part to blame.

    In cases where it is known by testing before birth, I think parents should have the issues explained and be given the choice of an abortion. This is not ideal, but there is no morally good reason for denying parents, especially the mother, this choice. I don't think any pregnant woman makes such a choice lightly, and her decision to become a mother or not should be respected, which requires political action to ensure that a safe, legal abortion is available on request.

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