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TOPIC: health

Society

The Colombian Paramilitary's Other Dirty War — Against LGBTQ+ People

In several parts of Colombia over the past decades, right-wing paramilitaries and their successor gangs have targeted all those tagged as sexual "deviants" for execution, supposedly in a bid to restore traditional values.

BARRANCABERMEJA — Sandra* spotted her name for the first time on a pamphlet left at her doorstep in 2008, in Barrancabermeja, her home town in northern Colombia. Local paramilitaries known as the Black Eagles (Águilas negras) dropped it there on Dec. 15 as a warning and, effectively, a deferred death sentence. It meant they knew where Sandra, a transgender woman, lived and that if she chose to stay, she could expect to die.

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The pamphlet, copies of which were left in bars or premises frequented by gays, lesbians and transsexuals, stated, "Barrancabermeja is becoming full of fags, AIDS-spreaders and sodomites, and this must stop." Colombians do not take gang threats lightly, and know that paramilitaries are death squads: in many parts of the country, they have killed with utter impunity.

Sandra was born in August 1989 in the San Rafael hospital in Barrancabermeja. Her mother was a housewife and her father worked for the country's big oil firm, Ecopetrol. The youngest of three children, she had dark skin and dark eyes, thick lips and long, curvy hair. She is not very tall, speaks slowly and tends to prolong words, and seldom laughs.

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Is Lukashenko Sick? Putin Too? Why Ukraine Won't Be Waiting For Dictators To Die

A spate of speculation on the health of Belarus strongman Alexander Lukashenko follows similar reports about would-be Vladimir Putin illnesses. Such talk feeds the hope of the Russian opposition and many in the West. Ukrainians have a different agenda — and timetable.

-Analysis-

Belarusian dictator Alexander Lukashenko was not enjoying the parade.

Appearing in Moscow’s Red Square for the May 9 Victory Day celebration, the 68-year-old strongman looked quite ill, and wore a bandage on his arm.

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He missed the Kremlin breakfast and didn't take the walk with Vladimir Putin and other heads of state across the Square to the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, reaching it by electric car instead, reports independent Russian news outlet Agents.Media reports reports.

When he then missed the Belarus celebration of the Day of the State Flag, Emblem and Anthem, rumors started to circulate that Lukashenko might have a serious health problem.

And for nearly a week, he vanished.

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Time To "Move On" From COVID? That's Not An Option For Me

Anger depletes and debilitates; grief, on the other hand, creates a new strength and resolve. What is centrally at stake for me, three years after I lost my husband, is a stubborn refusal to forget the disease that took him away.

-Essay-

NEW DELHI — Three years ago, it was during the last days in April that the season’s first Kalbaishakhi – gusts of thunder, storm and rain – broke into the sultry summer evening in Kolkata, just as it did this year. I remember the rains came late on that Sunday evening at the end of April 2020, stopping what had become our routine walk during that hour.

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Chewing Coca Leaves: From Sacred Ritual To 'Cocaine-Light'

In Bolivia, the coca leaf was once reserved for ancestry rituals and practices. Now it is being combined with other substances, especially amongst the very young, to create a toxic experience and dangerous concoction.

LA PAZ — There was a time when the coca leaf was considered sacred. Its use was restricted to Inca priests, the Inca, absolute kings on Earth, and the doctors of the Inca court. It was a gift from Inti, the Sun King. A divine leaf.

With the invasion of the Spaniards and the destruction of the Inca empire, commoners were able to access the leaf, which most Spaniards initially despised because they contemptuously considered it "something for Indians." But for the Mitayos, enslaved in the mines, and for the pongos (servants), coca consumption was a matter of survival. They used it to kill hunger and exhaustion from strenuous work.

The coca leaf is a plant native to South America and plays an important role in Andean societies. In addition to its medicinal virtues (stimulant, anesthetic and hunger suppressor), it has a leading role in social exchange and religious ceremonies. It is believed that its use spread to the entire Andean territory, with the Tiwanaku empire and later with the Inca empire.

The oldest coca leaf was found on the north coast of Peru and dates back to 2,500 BC. There is evidence that coca is the most widely used domestic plant from Andean prehistoric times to date, in the current territories of Colombia, Ecuador, Peru , Bolivia, Chile, Argentina, Paraguay and Brazil.

As the years passed, the Acullico, a social, ritual and medicinal practice in which a small bolus of coca is placed in the mouth between the cheek and jaw, became increasingly popular.

Those who chewed the plant used to be miners and transporters, workers with a physically demanding job, or peasants and farmers. But this has all changed.

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Society
Ashutosh Singh

Menstruation Must Be Talked About And Treated — Like Any Other Health Issue

In India, questions related to menstrual health are largely taboo, and routinely ignored by authorities. Elsewhere in the world, there is some progress on the issue, though much more is needed.

-Analysis-

NEW DELHI — There have been some significant developments around menstruation across the globe recently. Spain became the first European country to approve ‘paid menstrual leave’ for workers in case of severe period pain. Other countries like Japan, Indonesia, South Korea, Taiwan, Vietnam, Zambia and the Soviet Union introduced similar laws many years ago.

The Soviet Union introduced a national policy in 1922, Japan in 1947 and Indonesia in 1948. Scotland was the first in the world to make period products available to all who need them at relatively accessible places. A considerable milestone was achieved when the first-panel discussion on menstrual health was conducted at the 50th session of the Human Rights Council in Geneva in June 2022.

Menstrual leave in India is not a Martian concept. A school in Kerala has been granting its students period leaves since 1912. Bihar has been providing two days of special menstrual paid leave to women in the workforce since 1992. Kerala approved menstrual leave for female university students in January 2023.

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Society
Katja Ridderbusch

Talking Risks: New Research Finds Psychotherapy Can Have Dangerous Side Effects

It has long been assumed that psychotherapy can do no harm at worst. But new research makes clear that for some people, it can have very serious, even life-threatening, consequences.

BERLIN — Until now, we have assumed that, at worst, psychotherapy has no impact whatsoever. However, new research shows that treatment can have serious risks. A few patients experience side effects — and sometimes even an increase in mental health problems.

Across Europe and the United States, experts and politicians alike are concerned that people’s mental health is suffering. Massimiliano Mascherini from Eurofound, the European Foundation for the Improvement of Living and Working Conditions, has even said we are experiencing a “parallel pandemic in mental health”. U.S. President Joe Biden recently announced that mental health was one of his top priorities and his government would provide $300 million of funding for mental health and community projects.

Why? Well, one in five people in the U.S. has mental health problems. According to data from the Robert Koch Institute, even before the pandemic hit, one in 10 women and 8.1% of men in Germany were seeing a psychologist or psychiatrist.

The coronavirus crisis has made matters worse. According to data from the World Health Organization, since the start of the pandemic, the number of people diagnosed with anxiety and depression has risen by 25%. As a result, more people are seeking professional help.

“Even after three years of the pandemic, the demand for psychotherapy remains high,” says Gebhard Hentschel, president of the German Psychotherapists Association. In summer 2022, the number of patients seeking therapy was still around 40% higher than before COVID, which means waiting lists at practices and clinics are also long.

So far the biggest issue has been the lack of provision. But research is starting to highlight another problem that until now has gone under the radar: psychotherapy, just like other medical interventions, comes with its own risks. “Around 10% of psychotherapy patients experience serious and long-lasting side effects,” says Michael Linden, a neurologist, psychiatrist and psychotherapist at the Charité Hospital in Berlin.

Some patients even develop new, more serious anxieties, become dependent on their psychotherapists or experience a breakdown in relationships with family and friends. They end up in a worse situation than before, and in rare cases, therapy even ends in suicide.

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Society
Nakisanze Segawa

The HIV-Positive Ugandans Putting Anti-AIDS Campaign At Risk

“Elite controllers” are those who have HIV but show no symptoms. They’re proving a roadblock to the country’s otherwise promising anti-infection campaign.

LWENGO, UGANDA — Ahmed was certain the test result was wrong. It was 2003, and he and his five months-pregnant wife were at a health facility where she was getting a checkup. As staff did for all expectant parents, a worker prodded them to get tested for HIV. Ahmed’s wife tested negative. He did not. “I thought it was impossible, that my results must have been mistakenly switched with another person’s,” he says. That week, he took two more tests. Both confirmed he was infected with the virus that causes AIDS.

Health workers and Ahmed’s four wives begged him to start antiretroviral therapy, a cocktail of medications that prevents the virus from multiplying and reduces a person’s likelihood of spreading HIV and developing AIDS. At the time, Ahmed was in his early 40s; to his family, forgoing treatment seemed like courting a premature death. But he didn’t feel sick — no fever, chills or other symptoms — so he refused. Accepting treatment would have meant accepting a diagnosis he didn’t entirely believe, and the stigma that came with it.

Ahmed lives in Lwengo, a town about 165 kilometers (102 miles) southwest of Kampala, the capital. Amid a sweep of banana, cassava and coffee fields, small, white-roofed houses, and tarmacked roads, HIV is something to hide lest neighbors shun or mock a person as a “walking dead.” (That’s why Ahmed asked to be identified only by his first name.)

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Dottoré!
Mariateresa Fichele

The Way To A Doctor’s Heart

Our Neapolitan psychiatrist ponders the meaning of professional recognition, and lasagna.

Money, awards, recognition, promotions — those don’t mean a thing to me.

The real reward for me comes when patients cook.

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Dottoré!
Mariateresa Fichele

Facing The Shame, Sharing The Blame

Our Neapolitan psychiatrist is faced with the inadequacy of the Italian health system, and a mother’s helplessness.

I’ve been seeing Maria about her depression for a year now. Although she’s a skilled and sought-after embroiderer, she no longer works. I have often pressed her on this topic, but she's always been very reticent. Today, she reacted:

Dottoré, what do you want me to tell you — that my daughter shits on herself?”

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Society
Julián López de Mesa Samudio

Time To End The Western Witch Hunt Around Food

Social media hype and the "obsessive-compulsive" tendencies of younger generations are demonizing some basic foods, like bread, that have fed humanity for some 8,000 years.

-Essay-

BOGOTÁ — We largely owe our triumph as a species to gluten (a composite protein found in cereals like wheat). The domestication of the big, gluten-filled, cereals, paved the way for the rise of ancient civilizations, from Mesopotamia to Iran and the Mediterranean cultures of Egypt, Greece and Rome.

Wheat, barley and rye made large-scale agriculture possible, which fueled steady population growth through better nutrition. The rise of complex agricultural systems in turn led to the division of labor, consolidation of political systems and the state concept itself. So for more than 8,000 years, a great part of humanity has grown with the help of foods that contain gluten.

Yet today, these foods have become unspeakable villains to a growing number of 'foodies,' health enthusiasts and devotees of gastro-political and spiritual causes.

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Society
David Barroux

Gluten-Free In France: Stepping Out Of The Shadows, Heading Upmarket

For those in the haute cuisine world of French food, a no-gluten diet (whether by choice or health requirements) has long been a virtual source of shame. But bakers, chefs and pastry makers are now taking the diet to whole new levels of taste and variety.

PARIS — The "gluten-free" aren’t hiding anymore.

Whether they avoid the grain protein by choice or by obligation — due to taste, allergies or an intolerance — many stick to a diet seen by the outside world as a little bit funny, or perhaps simply just bland.

For some, being gluten-free even came with some amount of self-consciousness: about being that person, the one who announced at the beginning of dinner that they wouldn’t be eating that bread, or that pasta, or that pastry — or about coming across as precious and complicated, or worse, as a killjoy for everyone else’s gustatory pleasure.

For those who feel that it is hard to speak up, it's often easier just to keep the gluten intolerance to themselves and eat only the vegetables at meals, abstaining from bread and dessert to avoid stomach cramps.

But the times, they are a-changin'. Living without gluten used to feel punitive; now it feels more like an option. The number of gluten-free products has exploded, in both quantity and quality, and there’s never been a better time to join the "no-glu" camp.

In supermarkets, bakeries and restaurants, there are increasingly varied alternatives to gluten. And demand is just as high — €1 billion per year in sales in France alone, according to Nielsen. The research consultancy found that 3% of French households were gluten-free in 2019. Now, that number is 4.4%, which is twice as high as the number of “strictly vegetarian” households.

According to market research firm Kantar, the frequency and number of purchases, as well as the average amount spent for gluten-free products, continues to increase — up 6% compared with 2019.

In this context, it’s hardly surprising that gluten-free alternatives are becoming increasingly chic.

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Coronavirus
Duncan Robertson

Why Making COVID Predictions Is Actually Getting Harder

We know more about COVID than ever before, but that doesn't make it easier to predict what will happen this year. It also remains to be seen if we'll put the lessons we learned into practice.

In 2020, we knew very little about the novel virus that was to become known as COVID-19. Now, as we enter 2023, a search of Google Scholar produces around five million results containing the term.

So how will the pandemic be felt in 2023? This question is in some ways impossible to answer, given a number of unknowns. In early 2020, the scientific community was focused on determining key parameters that could be used to make projections as to the severity and extent of the spread of the virus. Now, the complex interplay of COVID variants, vaccination and natural immunity makes that process far more difficult and less predictable.

But this doesn’t mean there’s room for complacency. The proportion of people estimated to be infected has varied over time, but this figure has not fallen below 1.25% (or one in 80 people) in England for the entirety of 2022. COVID is very much still with us, and people are being infected time and time again.

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