Pharmacies have seen a rush on surgical masks, like this one, in response to the swine flu (Photo courtesy of the National Institutes of Health)
Some pharmacies are running out of face masks because people are buying them to try to protect themselves from swine flu. Lester Graham has more on that:
Transcript
Some pharmacies are running out of face masks because people are buying them to try to protect themselves from swine flu. Lester Graham has more on that:
One infectious disease specialist told us if we get to the point of an epidemic, anything that covers your mouth would probably be helpful.
But, people are not waiting until it’s a full-fledged epidemic before getting face masks.
One pharmacy we visited usually sells three different kinds of masks. It was sold out.
Those who can’t find masks at the local pharmacy are sometimes directed to hardware stores.
Lowe’s Public Relations indicated it has seen an increase in popularity of dust and respirator masks, but the home improvement chain declined to give specific numbers.
Health officials say if you’re going to use a dust mask, buy one rated “N-95.” It filters out 95% of particles.
But, some health officials say, it’s better for those who are sick to wear them than it is for you to wear one for protection from the swine flu.
Many holistic veterinarians think both dogs and cats can benefit from being fed fresh food. (Photo by Kinna Ohman)
Dr. Konrad Kruesi practices holistic medicine out of an old farmhouse in rural Vermont. (Photo by Kinna Ohman)
Holistic veterinarians such as Dr. Kruesi use a variety of nutritional supplements and herbs to help heal animals. (Photo by Kinna Ohman)
Instead of shelves filled with pharmaceuticals, most holistic veterinarians fill their shelves with natural treatments, such as these liquid herbs. (Photo by Kinna Ohman)
Veterinarians who use a holistic approach to healing make up only about one percent of
all veterinarians in the country. But their numbers are growing. And so is their
popularity among pet owners. The mainstream veterinary community wants to see more
science behind the methods used by holistic veterinarians. Kinna Ohman
reports:
Transcript
Veterinarians who use a holistic approach to healing make up only about one percent of
all veterinarians in the country. But their numbers are growing. And so is their
popularity among pet owners. The mainstream veterinary community wants to see more
science behind the methods used by holistic veterinarians. Kinna Ohman
reports:
The snow’s starting to fall as I arrive at a small, yellow farmhouse. I hurry my dogs up to
the front door and step inside.
(Sound of dogs)
This is the veterinary clinic of Dr. Konrad Kruesi. He’s a holistic veterinarian with a
different approach to animal healthcare. One thing Dr. Kruesi does is to take a lot of time
teaching clients how to help heal their animals. He says it’s hard work but most clients
embrace the idea:
“Nine out of ten of them do a wonderful job. They do make food, they learn
massage, they learn to stretch their animal, they’ll buy air filters for the allergic
individual. They see that healing is a progression.”
Pet owners who switch to holistic veterinarians such as Kruesi swear by this approach,
and Neil and Joannie Alcorn are perfect examples. They found Dr. Kruesi after the local
veterinarians said they’d run out of options to help their dog Poppy. Poppy developed
complications after picking up a rare parasite, and the veterinarians tried everything from
exploratory surgery to steroids. Neil Alcorn says after ten months of this, they told him
to prepare for his dog’s death:
“The vets were now basically saying you should get prepared for the fact Poppy’s
not going to last much longer. And they didn’t have anything else to offer.”
But the Alcorns decided to keep trying. They researched holistic veterinarians and came
across the name of Konrad Kruesi. Right away, Dr. Kruesi says he taught the Alcorns
how to prepare fresh, homemade food for their dog. They started with a simple puree of
natural foods and offered it to Poppy. Within a few days, their dog was showing more
interest in food for the first time in months. Dr. Kruesi then added natural supplements to
help build up Poppy’s strength. Neil Alcorn says the good results continued:
“It was so remarkable. Within between two to three months, she had been weaned
off of every single medication, including the steroids, and was beginning to function
again as a living being.”
Veterinarians such as Kruesi say this kind of care shows how a natural and holistic
approach should be part of standard veterinary treatment, but there’s no policy within the
mainstream veterinary community to link clients such as the Alcorns with holistic
veterinarians.
Dr. Craig Smith is with the American Veterinary Medical Association. He says most vets
are cautious about fully supporting holistic veterinary medicine until they see more
science:
“Unfortunately, for too many of the complementary and alternative veterinary
medical therapies, including some of the nutritional recommendations, we don’t
have the science. I’m not saying it doesn’t work, it obviously does work for some
animals. The question is how can you, as a practicing veterinarian, develop your
level of confidence to say this is going to work for your dog.”
So the larger community of veterinarians is reluctant to endorse holistic medicine as part
of standard animal care, but this doesn’t stop pet owners such as the Alcorn from
continuing to use the holistic methods for their animals. They’re much more involved in
their animals’ healthcare, from preparing meals to being part of decision making at the
local veterinary office. Neil Alcorn says they don’t need to go further than Poppy for
proof it works. She’s still going strong six years after the local veterinarians gave up on
her:
“She was sixteen years old this last September. This weekend I took her hiking for
several two to three mile hikes. And she still plays with us. She’s gray, she’s
showing her age but then so are we all. And we have every hope of sending birthday
congratulations to Dr. Kruesi on Poppy’s seventeenth birthday next September.
(laughs) Even to us, it’s a bit of an amazing story.”
Wildlife officials want to eliminate the European mute swan so it doesn't compete with native birds. (Photo by Christina Shockley)
Controversy over what to do about a non-native swan has taken an
unusual turn. One state that was going to kill all of its mute swans
will now give some of them a short lease on life. It’s going to let
people “adopt” the wild birds. Christina Shockley has the story:
Transcript
Controversy over what to do about a non-native swan has taken an
unusual turn. One state that was going to kill all of its mute swans
will now give some of them a short lease on life. It’s going to let
people “adopt” the wild birds. Christina Shockley has the story:
Mute swans are large, gorgeous, white birds. They were brought to the
U.S. from Europe in the 1800s to beautify parks and estates. The swans
were meant to be kept in captivity, but they escaped, and since, the
numbers have skyrocketed along the Great Lakes and Eastern seaboard.
So, like in other areas, the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources
has come up with a plan. The state wants to shoot all the mute swans,
but this doesn’t sit well with a lot of people.
Pat Kujawa is one of them. Kujawa is sitting in her home on Phantom
Lake. The area is home to about 85% of Wisconsin’s mute swans. Each
summer for several years, Kujawa’s family has bonded with the mute
swans. She sees the birds as neighbors on the lake.
She holds a photo album full of pictures of the swans and her kids as
they grew up:
“We have pictures of our son Kyle swimming with them, and he’s probably
about I would say 8 or 9 years old, and again other pictures like that,
showing the parents standing back, and all of the babies coming up and
taking bread right out of Kyle’s hands. Sort of suggests that perhaps
the DNR characterization of them being aggressive is somewhat
misguided, or at least it’s what they want people to hear.”
Wildlife officials say the mute swans ARE aggressive, especially during
the nesting and breeding season. They say the mutes push native birds
out of their habitat and upset aquatic life by uprooting vegetation
along the shore.
Officials also say the mute swan was posing a problem as the state
worked to re-introduce the native trumpeter swan. Their numbers have
just recovered.
But because of protests from people like Kujawa, the state government
says it will temporarily modify its mute swan eradication plan. What
they’re doing might seem a little unusual. The state is going to let
people in three counties “adopt,” or sponsor, as many mute swans as they
want.
Erin Celello is from the Department of Natural Resources. She says
people won’t have to bring the birds in the house to live like a cat or
dog, but she says they will have to get the swans fixed:
“They will be able to apply for a permit, to capture a swan from the
wild, and they will be required to neuter that swan, and re-release
that swan into the wild.”
Celello says that will keep the birds from breeding, and the state
won’t shoot the birds when they see them:
“We felt that this is kind of a win-win for everyone. As an agency, we
are still upholding our share of what has become a national mute swan
control policy, while at the same time, allowing for citizens who have
formed emotional attachments to these birds, to keep those birds
around, and keep them on their landscape.”
Celello says the state’s goal is still to kill all of the mute swans. She
says officials will shoot the mutes that aren’t wearing neck tags that
show the birds have been spayed or neutered. And obviously the swans
that have the surgery won’t be having babies. One vet says the spaying
or neutering procedure could cost between 150 and 250 dollars per bird,
and Grace Graham says that might be difficult for her to afford.
Graham is Pat Kujawa’s neighbor on Phantom Lake.
The 70-year-old retired school teacher has been swimming with, and
feeding, the mute swans for years. She says the mute swans should just
be left alone and that it’s wrong to eliminate a species. But she
knows, ultimately, if it’s impossible for the birds to reproduce, the
swans will be gone at some point:
“I don’t want to even think about our lake not having any mute swans on
it. All this summer, the last time I swam with them before the water
got cold I thought, Grace, this is the last time you’re going to get to
do this. Last time you fed them, last time you do all of these things.
It’s kind of like a death thing.”
For the Environment Report, I’m Christina Shockley.
A street in Havana, Cuba. After more than 40 years of a U.S. economic embargo and more than a decade after the loss of their Soviet trading partners, Cubans have learned to improvise and make do with old stuff - cars, machines, and even medical equipment. (Photo by Ann Murray)
Tons of medical materials that normally would end up in U.S. landfills are being rescued, repackaged and sent to other countries. An aid group is working with local hospitals and volunteers to get surplus medical supplies to Latin America and the Caribbean. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Ann Murray takes us on the trip from salvage to salvation:
Transcript
Tons of medical materials that normally would end up in U.S.
landfills are being rescued, repackaged and sent to other countries.
An aid group is working with local hospitals and volunteers to get
surplus medical supplies to Latin America and the Caribbean. The
Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Ann Murray takes us on the trip from
salvage to salvation.
(Sound of warehouse activities)
In a warehouse near Pittsburgh, Global Links staffers are preparing to load a shipment of medical aid into a forty-foot container bound for Cuba. Workers haul pallets of dialysis kits, mattresses, waiting room chairs and gurneys to the loading dock. Everything here has been carefully sorted, evaluated, and matched with requests from the Cuban Ministry of Health.
Kathleen Hower founded Global Links with two friends back in 1989. It used to operate out of their houses. Since then, Global Links has sent $110 million worth of medical aid, all of it requested by the receiving countries. About two-thirds of that has gone to Cuba.
“Cuba’s unique in so many ways; they’re very advanced medically, they do transplant surgery, they have a lot of doctors. There’s no shortage of physicians there. They’re very different than other countries.”
What Cuba shares with other developing countries is critical shortages of equipment and supplies.
(Sound of busy street)
Here in Havana, the streets are filled with Eisenhower-era cars and lined with shops that repair everything from pots to paperbacks. After more than forty years of a U.S. economic embargo and more than a decade after the loss of their Soviet trading partners, Cubans are masters of improvisation.
The same is true for the island’s medical community, says Sebastion Pererra, the former director of Cuba’s Center for Electromedicine.
PERERRA/TRANSLATOR: “The embargo has been like a school for us. It taught us how to keep working with the same machines and not have the identical parts to replace them.”
Pererra says parts and technical information from Global Links have helped keep old medical equipment going. They’ve also supported new programs in breast cancer screening and dialysis research.
MURRAY: “Has the equipment that Global Links sent to you saved lives?”
PERERRA/TRANSLATOR: “It is undeniable.”
Global Links sends materials to Cuba that other countries can’t use. That’s because medical care is not as advanced in many other developing countries.
Doctor Armando Pancorbo uses the salvaged equipment for minimally invasive surgery at the aging hospital where he works. He and his team have done nearly four thousand operations, using equipment and supplies that were thrown out by U.S. hospitals.
This morning, the O.R. is busy. Anesthesiologists prepare a middle-aged patient for gallbladder surgery while nurses set up sterilized instruments.
Back in Global Links’ Pittsburgh office, volunteers help with the labor-intensive job of packing supplies for shipping. Kristin Carreira says this work is helpful on two fronts.
“Our mission here is both humanitarian and environmental. Environmental because all of our medical supplies that we’re working on would have been put in an incinerator or landfill and so we’re really recycling in that sense.”
The American Hospital Association estimates that U.S. hospitals produce about three million tons of waste every year and they pay about three billion dollars to dispose of it. Many of the supplies that end up in the trash are opened but unused. Worries about liability, changes in technology, and a rash of government regulations account for much of the still-useful materials being thrown out.
Vicky Carse is a nurse who traveled to Cuba as a volunteer.
“Seeing people re-washing gloves where we just would open gloves and throw them away, drapes that we just open up and throw away. To see these people harbor these items, re-wash them and re-wash them because they don’t have supplies, just makes you value what you have.”
The medical community is beginning to take notice. More and more US hospitals are contacting aid organizations. Laura Brannen directs a joint environmental program for the American Hospital Association and the U.S. EPA. She says Global Links and similar groups offer hospitals much needed guidance.
“They provide the infrastructure around what can be used around the world. And without those guidelines, hospitals would be tossing this kind of materials because they don’t know where else to send it.”
Global Links founder Kathleen Hower is happy to set up the guide posts. She says we have to realize that we are all members of a much broader community – one that could use our help, even when it’s a matter of just sharing stuff we’d normally throw away.
Pharmacies have seen a rush on surgical masks, like this one, in response to the swine flu (Photo courtesy of the National Institutes of Health)
