Hesperian Weblog

Do you know where your water comes from?

No matter where you are, in a rural or urban area, you are in a watershed. Often, we know which city, county and state we live in, but not which watershed! A watershed is an area of land where all the water from rain and snow drains downward to a single body of water, such as a stream, river, lake, or wetland. A healthy watershed has the right combination of plants, water and soil to protect groundwater and can provide us with water for drinking, washing, agriculture, industry, and recreation. If a watershed is damaged—for example by deforestation, dumping of industrial and agricultural waste, or building large dams—everyone’s health is affected.

Chapter 9 of A Community Guide to Environmental Health – published by Hesperian in 2008 and now available in Spanish – provides a wealth of information about why it is important to protect our watersheds and how this can be done. It includes clear explanations and illustrations, activities, and stories about people who have organized to protect their watersheds and their health in the Aguan river valley of Honduras, among the Yaqui people in Northern Mexico, and in the Yukon territory in Alaska. Take a look at this unique resource that is being used by health workers, teachers, activists, development professionals and others around the world working to improve the health of people and the environment.

Curious about your watershed? If you live in the US, you can find your watershed at the website of the Environmental Protection Agency by entering your zip code.

Happy Bike to Work Day!

Another morning, another commute to work – but this time, there were treats along the way! Today is Bike to Work Day, started by the League of American Bicyclists in 1956 and hosted in Berkeley by the East Bay Bicycle Coalition.

Almost half of Hesperian staff bike to work, and most of the rest of staff take the train, the bus, carpools, and their own two feet – it’s better for the planet, and better for us. And it can help us to slow down and connect with the world around us in a different way. We hope you joined us today (and everyday) in using your bicycle to get around whenever possible!

What’s changed? New software plug-in aids publishing work and Hesperian’s updates

Usually when a publisher reprints a book, they just send an order to the printing plant that they need another several thousand books, and the printer simply reuses the same files (or plates) to produce the additional copies. But not Hesperian.

Since thousands of people in over 200 countries rely on Where There Is No Doctor and other Hesperian publications to diagnose, treat, and prevent common illnesses, it is crucial to keep the information in our materials as up-to-date as possible. Every printing reflects evolving medical knowledge, changes in availability and effectiveness of medicines, World Health Organization recommendations, and more. Dozens of changes are made with every printing, and now, also between “printings” on the internet.

  While researching and implementing those changes is a lot of work, the challenge becomes even greater when you consider the need to communicate these medical changes to the thousands of users of the books and the partner organizations that translate, publish, and distribute them in 88 languages – organizations that also need to keep their editions up-to-date.

Like many publishers, Hesperian uses Adobe InDesign to create our books, but the program has no useful way to track and record changes. For years, we have tried to work around this shortcoming, manually marking up changed pages to photocopy or PDF and share with translation partners and others – a time consuming process with less than optimal results.

At last an efficient technological solution has appeared – from a small company called CtrlPublishing based in Sweden. CtrlPublishing has developed a “plug-in” (add-on) for Adobe InDesign and InCopy that allows for tracking of changes from multiple editors and designers. The plug-in, called CtrlChanges, clearly tracks and marks additions and deletions to text, is user-friendly and intuitive, and enables the creation of annotated PDFs with complete records of changes. This will enable our colleagues in Cambodia, for instance, to easily see what was added and deleted in our new edition so they can evaluate whether they want to translate and incorporate those same changes into their new Khmer printing.

  We visited CtrlPublishing’s website and tested a free trial of the plug-in, then wrote to the company to learn more. We were incredibly grateful when CtrlPublishing offered to donate the software to our always financially struggling non-profit!

We have now been experimenting with and using the CtrlChanges Pro plug-in for 4 months, while updating materials on midwifery, community dentistry, and environmental health. During this short time, we have been able to simplify and streamline our internal editorial processes and improve our ability to communicate critical medical updates to partners.

This summer, Hesperian’s flagship resource, Where There Is No Doctor, will be updated for the 26th time since its original publication in Spanish in the 1970s. HIV treatment recommendations, medicines for tuberculosis, and many other topics will be reviewed by Hesperian staff and trusted medical advisors working all over the world. But this time, we know that the process will be smoother and we will be able to share these lifesaving updates more quickly and efficiently in 88 languages with the people who need them most.

Happy International Workers Day!

This May 1st, workers all over the world will be celebrating International Workers Day. Our own Hesperian offices will be closed the following Monday, May 2nd, to show our solidarity with workers all around the world. Although International Workers’ Day originated in the US, we no longer celebrate it with other nations, instead celebrating our Labor Day in September, stripped of all political significance.

In the marches, speeches, and assemblies that happen on International Workers’ Day, unions and workers’ groups speak about organizing, labor laws, and campaigns for better wages and benefits – powerful messages the reflect the current race-to-the-bottom capitalism that is oppressing workers worldwide. However, these groups often leave out issues of occupational safety and health (OSH). OSH groups worldwide mark a different day, April 28th, as Workers Memorial Day to commemorate workers who were injured or killed at work and to call for more safety in the workplace.

You can find events in your city or community here.

With limited funds and manpower, groups that support workers often have to make a very tough choice: work for better salaries or work towards safer jobs. In our newest book-in-development, A Workers’ Guide to Health and Safety, Hesperian is trying to merge these approaches into a more holistic and comprehensive understanding of workers’ health: one in which low salary affects health just as much as poor ergonomics does. By including all the social hazards of working in a health framework, the Workers’ Guide makes the case for a labor movement that includes OSH.

You can learn more about this new material or find ways to be part of its development process by writing to Miriam at miriam@hesperian.org. 

We also encourage you to stop by the Addison Street Windows Gallery if you’re here in Berkeley – there’s a great show of photographs of migrant workers and political activists in the US and Mexico called "Beyond Borders". The window gallery is between Shattuck and Milvia, and the photographer, David Bacon, is a friend of Hesperian and long time activist writer and photojournalist. You can read more about the exhibit and David’s work here. 

Photo of ASU contingent at the Brisbane Labour Day March, May 3, by Holly Paterson

Commemorating the 100th Anniversary of the Triangle Fire

Last month, we released a booklet on fire safety in the workplace to commemorate the 100th anniversary of the Triangle Shirtwaist Fire. You can read more and download the booklet, “Fighting Factor Fires: 100 Years After the Triangle Fire” here. This booklet is based on content from our book-in-development, A Workers’ Guide to Health and Safety. If you are interesting in learning more about this and other material from the book, how to get involved (by becoming a partner or donor), or would like to share with us your feedback, please contact Miriam at workersbook@hesperian.org.

We weren’t the only ones commemorating this important anniversary – dozens of media outlets used the opportunity to talk about the fire, as well as the development of labor struggles and the fight for safe working conditions in the United States. Many of these commentators discussed the current attempts to repeal worker’s collective bargaining rights in Wisconsin and around the Midwest, as well as the lack of new safety standards after recent large-scale industrial accidents such as the BP Deepwater Horizon oil spill and the Massey Energy Upper Big Branch Mine disaster. Those two workplace accidents in 2010 killed 11 and 29 workers respectively.

Steve Frasier, writing for CNN, spoke of the fire’s legacy: “One reason the Triangle fire has lodged so deeply in the public memory is that it marked a watershed in the nation's public life. … Those 146 men and women died in part because they had been denied a voice in determining the basic conditions of their working lives. Their deaths were redeemed by an aroused citizenry that had come to realize that such a right was a matter of life and death and of human dignity.” 

On Huffington Post, Marcus Baram and Andrea Stone’s discussed the current attacks to workplace regulations, “The GOP's budget proposal includes slashing $99 million from the Occupational and Safety Health Administration, a 40 percent reduction in the budget of the federal agency most responsible for making sure the nation's workplaces are safe -- Democrats claim that translates into 8,000 fewer workplace hazard inspections and 740 fewer whistleblower discrimination probes.” Their lengthy piece goes on to detail not only gaps in current regulations and in funding, but a lack of enforcement of existing laws. The piece also includes several photos from the original Triangle Fire. 

Writing for Salon, Joan Walsh reminds us that the post-fire boom in pro-labor legislation didn’t happen in a vacuum:

Clearly, the Triangle fire tragedy is seizing attention because it's a vivid, heartbreaking example of what happens when you have unbridled capitalism, no unions and a state dedicated to protecting the prerogatives of business owners, not the larger society. It's also getting attention because, in the words of Franklin Delano Roosevelt's heroic labor secretary Frances Perkins, the day of the awful fire was "the day the New Deal began." New Deal architects and New York powerhouses Al Smith and Robert Wagner led the remarkable four-year investigation into the fire, which resulted in an astonishing barrage of pro-labor legislation, creating new health and safety codes as well as restricting child labor and shortening the work week for women (to 54 hours).

But it must also be remembered that a lot of organizing and protest led to that post-Triangle labor agenda. In 1909, 20,000 garment workers, most of them women, engaged in a massive four-month strike, after Triangle workers voted to unionize -- and were promptly fired. Women who joined the "Uprising of the 20,000" regularly went to jail -- over 700 were arrested -- and in the end, the strike won public support and resulted in the unionization of several garment companies. But not Triangle. The awful tragedy just a year later proved the need for unions, and for state worker protection; without the union ferment and the four-month strike, New York politicians might not have paid the kind of attention to the Triangle tragedy that led to [Al] Smith and [Robert] Wagner's legislative agenda and gave the rest of us the New Deal.

To learn more about the Triangle Fire, visit the Cornell University Kheel Center for Labor-Management Documentation and Archives online archive materials.

Download our booklet, “Fighting Factor Fires: 100 Years After the Triangle Fire” here.

Dr Abhay Bang: the revolutionary pediatrician

Dr. Abhay Bang, a longtime Hesperian friend and advisor, is a world leader in community-based neonatal health. His approach to home-based newborn and child care, and belief in community health workers to provide lifesaving services has transformed care in Gadchiroli, India. These practices have informed and shaped many of our materials, including our current undertaking of the major revision of Where There Is No Doctor. We are pleased to share with you the following profile of Dr. Bang recently posted to guardian.co.uk.