PASSIVE SMOKING DAMAGES CHILDREN'S ARTERIES

There is a report on BBC on the damage that passive smoking in the home does to the health of children. Their arteries are damaged, a condition that lasts into adulthood. Please click:
 

BBC News - Passive smoking 'damages children's arteries'

ww.bbc.com/news/health-26432111

7 days ago - Exposure to passive smoking in childhood

causes lasting damage to the structure of children's a
rteries, say researchers.

 

There is only one practice that is worse. That is pregnant mothers smoking. My children have been lucky that there has been no smoking in my home. They are free from the damage to their health.

Mothers with HIV infection should not smoke as the poisons will affect the breast milk and pass infection down the oesophagus of the breast feeding baby.

 

If the mother is not on ART, the child will be infected with HIV from the milk to the infections in the throat.


Daily hit tally    145, 213



 

AM I IMMUNE TO MALARIA?

I have lived in Papua New Guinea for 20 years. During that time, I have been bitten by thousands of mosquitoes, many of which were Anopheles with black striped football socks.

 

I have not taken malaria tablets in 20 years. I have suffered two bouts of cerebral malaria from Plasmodium falciparum and spent time in hospital on one such bout.

 

But that is all. I have been spared from malaria in the rest of that 20 years. I do hear that many PNG people are immune to malaria. It seems to be true.

Having spoken to many PNG friends, I find that all never take malaria medication. That is the practice of the silly expatriates who never want to catch malaria. PNG people only take medicine on the onset of fever,

They all say they have not taken medication in up to a decade. But they have suffered fever only once in that time or perhaps never.

 

MALARIA IN HIGHLANDS AND ON KOKODA TRACK

There is a report on BBC about the spread of malaria in Africa and South America to the high altitudes the result of global warming. Please click:

Global warming spreads malaria to higher altitudes – 'In Ethiopia ...

beforeitsnews.com/.../global-warming-spreads-
malaria-to-higher-altitude..

5 hours ago - By Rebecca Morelle, Science reporter

 6 March 2014. (BBC World Service)

Warmer temperatures are causing

malaria to spread to higher ...

 

The same applies to the highlands of Papua New Guinea and to the Kokoda Track that attracts Australian trekkers every year.

 

The most well used drug now is artemisin which comes from China. But there are reports that the malaria parasite is slowly becoming immune. Where do we go from there? There is a crisis on its way in the world.
 

AIDS VICTIMS KILLED BY SORCERY?

Last week there was joy in my house. One family member had gone to a health clinic in town and met Grace. So the reports that she was dead were false. 

 

It was a week later that the women in the family went to the clinic to find Grace. They enquired at the counter to be told that Grace had no entry on her card since last November.

The family members visited the home of members of Grace's family that was not far away. They were told that Grace had died last November. Her family said that she had died of sorcery. This can involve poison in food or on clothes hanging on the clothes line.

My daughters were told that we should not blame ourselves. She had gone to the village with her AIDS infection and was killed by poison.

But she had TB not AIDS !! The family said she would have died anyway even if she stayed with us. Sorcery knows no boundaries.

It turned out that my daughter had seen Grace's cousin at a distance at the health clinic. She was tall and beautiful like Grace.

We do know that the house stealers had spread the word that I was HIV positive and an AIDS carrier. This was to remove me from the house they planned to steal. I am HIV negative. Please click:

HOUSE STEALERS ON RUN FROM POLICE
 

They first removed Grace. There is a good chance that they informed Grace's father and other family members that she was HIV positive as infected by her husband. The word would have spread to the people of Kemabolo. AIDS and TB are very close diseases.

It does raise the question of whether or not AIDS victims are killed by family members or members of the village.

This is a vicious extension of stigma and discrimination. No wonder people want to keep their infection secret and move away from the village.

In the week after Grace was taken by her father, she sent me a text that said "Darling, my hands and feet are going numb. I think I am dying". It may have been poison from sorcery.

I texted back but the message never went through. She died a month later. This did not sound like tuberculosis. I have not moved on yet.

Daily Hit Tally: 144, 786



 

MASTERY LEARNING IN MEDICAL TRAINING

Brilliant doctors will save lives but as long as they are professional, caring, methodical and well read on latest research. Doctors need not be brilliant to do that.

For several years, there has been a program in mastery learning at the University of Papua New Guinea Medical College. It promotes in student doctors the skills of diagnosis and treatment over a wide range of illnesses.

 

I have not examined the program but would guess that a well organized program would set down several hundred illnesses for the students to examine on paper or computer.

 

They would master the diagnosis, causes and treatment of the illnesses. They would practise before going out to treat patiuents for real.

 

It raises the question of whether or not the universities have to lower the level of difficulty of their studies and raise the level of mastery. It may be that many of the best doctors are not brilliant but good practical average.

 

Universities should not seek to weed out students. There are fallacies about so-called intelligence. In my young years, I gained from high school a certain paranoia about not being intelligent enough. There seems to be a degree of smart-arse snobbery among some teachers and university lecturers..

 

But in the years that followed to the present, I recognise in myself a high degree of analytical ability and ability to put ideas together. I recall a nerd lecturer at University saying that intelligence is the capacity to think in high level concepts.

I have always thought that highly intelligent people can read higher level concepts if they have to. But the real mark of intelligence is the capacity to explain in simple terms. Some people hide behind big words.

 

The same lecturer told me I probably did not have the intellect to succeed in university studies. Yet in my two degrees, I gained many Distinctions and Credits assignments and exams. Would I have made an effective doctor? Probably..

 

Universities have to practise mastery learning. They need to identify and train the best. Many of these may not be brilliant.  

 

The secret is to raise the level of learning in primary, secondary and tertiary education. Education should not be made to become a barrier. Gaps should not exist in learning that allow only the smarter students to bridge.

MASTERY LEARNING WILL OVERTAKE OUTCOME BASED EDUCATION

The world has been struggling with Outcome Based Education. The problem has been that it is all too theoretical and difficult.

 

Outcome Based Education started with another name. It was Mastery Learning as designed and refined by Dr Benjamin Bloom from 1955.

Mastery learning was spurned by the so-called academics as it was seen as not theoretical and complex enough. It did not sort out the dummos from the high level students. They said that Mastery Learning was dumbing down the process of education.

It had to be made more complex if the USA was to overtake the USSR in the cold war space race. Already the USA had been horrified in 1956 by the launching of the satellite Sputnik by the USSR.

But Mastery Learning had the focus of promoting skill in the basics for all students. Not good enough.

The academics thought that education should focus on the intelligent students. The dummos could work for the local meat works, supermarkets and city councils.

The new approach was called Outcome Based Education and the world sank into confusion. No basics meant that students were being required to run before they could crawl.

Mastery Learning proceeded from the simple to complex, concrete to abstract and known to unknown. Outcome Based Education went from complex to complex, unknown to unknown and abstract to more abstract.

This is the problem that faces Papua New Guinea The elitist consultants introduced the Outcome Based mode with limited focus on the basics. The focus was on research which was quite useless in schools with no libraries and few computers.

But a new breath of fresh air has come to Papua New Guinea with a basics focused program of Mastery Learning. Problems of students are taken into account as they practise the basics daily. Please click:

MASTERY LEARNING BROUGHT ME TO PAPUA NEW GUINEA

Interested students will achieve up to 100% accuracy in writing, science and mathematics. But that is not good enough. There has to be a failure rate of at least 20% of students.

The overriding criterion has become entry to university. If the low average students can achieve high grades by Mastery Learning, does this mean they will clog up the universities by being stupid and unable to perform the tasks?

The early assessment was called Norm Referenced Learning. Education had to separate students into boxes of brilliant, average and dummo.

Mastery Learning brought Criterion Referenced Learning by which students were graded by achievement.

It seems that PNG education allows internal assessment by Criterion Referenced Learning and external assessment by Norm Referenced Learning.

That keeps the dummos out of university. The system is unfair if students do not have the opportunity to practise the Norm Referenced skills in school. They are being set up for failure.
 

HOUSE STEALERS ON RUN FROM POLICE

Beware of Housestealers Alan and Cathy Baragu of Raluana Village in East New Britain.

The house at 83 Garia Street is strangely quiet. The house stealers have gone on the run from police. There is no more raucous screaming from the woman, no vulgar swearing at the caretaker. There are no more threats of violence from the man Alan Baragu, house stealer and criminal..

The caretaker was harrassed and intimidated by accusations of being an AIDS carrier, infector of women and violent. He had abused his wife Grace who he was helping with TB treatment and looking after with love and caring.

 

Last time they were there after an illegal occupation of 5 months, they stole whatever they could. The container in the back yard was broken into and the old man's tools and engineering equipment taken.

 

They tried to put blame on the caretaker. They broke into the old man's room and stole his housing file.  Now they have his lease document they would have copied into a forgery to sell the house.

 

On the last night the house stealer came, the doors and gates had been chained and locked. But he forced his way in and tried to smash the front door with a sledge hammer. But he failed badly. Please click:

HOUSE STEALER SMASHES DOOR WITH SLEDGE HAMMER

On that night, he came with two other men. We have been advised that they came to take possession of the house once he had forced his way in and changed the locks. They were from Wabag. The house stealer sells mainly to highlanders who will evict tenants with violence.

The caretaker would have been forced out and the house taken, all before the old man was due to come back from overseas within a few days. He would have been locked out too.

The house stealer may have taken the new tenants's money and is now on the run from police and new tenants. There may have been no refund of upwards of K40,000. Never do business with a con-man.

But now the old man is back and complained to  the  6 mile police who are looking for Alan and Cathy Baragu and their son Julian. The Baragus are on the run. They thought it was going to be so easy.

They also have a case to answer on the murder of Grace. Only her father knows why he came and took her away to her death. He was tricked by the house stealers.


Daily Hit Tally   144, 657