Happy Special Day/Week/Month

[Guest]

.

[saabnet]

Going with a blue avatar for Oct 10th which is World Mental Health Day - Blue Day 2008. The blueday2008.org web site has an interesting blurb about Depression and Poverty on its home page. My grandfather suffered from from mental health issues and dementia as well as Alzheimers as he got older. Empower and Overcome.

-Scott

[saabnet]

..and now going pink for the rest of the month for National Breast Cancer Awareness Month. I have six sisters, two sisters-in-law, a mom, a wife, and a daughter...

Breast cancer is the most common cancer in women in the United States. According to the American Cancer Society, it's estimated that About 178,480 women in the United States will be found to have invasive breast cancer in 2007. About 40,460 women will die from the disease this year. Right now there are slightly over 2 million women living in the United States who have been treated for breast cancer.

And not to be funny, but seriously, although rare, men get breast cancer too...

Breast cancer occurs primarily in women, but men can also develop breast cancer. Although men have less breast tissue than women, they do have breast cells that can undergo cancerous changes. Male breast cancer makes up less than 1 percent of all cases of breast cancer, and is usually detected in men between 60 and 70 years of age.

http://nbcam.org/

-Scott

[saabnet]

Doesn't it seem like every day is SOME kind of day?

Anyway, happy International Day for the Eradication of Poverty!

http://www.un.org/esa/socdev/social/intldays/IntlDay/index.html

-Scott

[Peter S]

November 19th is...



http://www.worldtoilet.org/getinvolved.asp?no=19

there's an eye-opening piece recently in Time Magazine built around a review of Rose George's new book, The Big Necessity: The Unmentionable World of Human Waste and Why It Matters

[ . . . ]

Toilets are a privilege that nearly half the world lacks. At least 2.6 billion people around the planet have no access to a toilet — and that doesn't just mean that they don't have a nice, heated indoor bathroom. It means they have nothing — not a public toilet, not an outhouse, not even a bucket. They defecate in public, contaminating food and drinking water, and the disease toll due to unsanitized human waste is staggering. George notes that 80% of the world's illnesses are caused by fecal matter: A single gram of feces can contain 10 million viruses, 1 million bacteria, 1,000 parasitic cysts and 100 worm eggs. According to the estimates of one sanitation specialist George cites, each of the 2.6 billion people who live without sanitation may ingest up to 10 grams of fecal matter a day. The consequence is often diarrhea, which is a mere irritation in the West, but in the developing world a lethal condition that kills 2.2 million people a year — more than AIDS, tuberculosis or malaria. And it's all for lack of a toilet, which may be why George isn't one for toilet jokes. "I don't think 2.6 billion people without a toilet is very funny," she writes.

[ . . . ]

what lingers after you finish reading The Big Necessity is characters like Champaben, an outcast woman from the untouchable Dalit caste in India whose job is to clean the country's dry, filthy latrines. She regularly contracts dysentery, giardiasis and brain fever from her exposure to human waste. No one deserves that fate, and as George makes clear, the very least we can do for every person on this planet is to give them a place to go.

http://www.time.com/time/health/article/0,8599,1859878,00.html?imw=Y

P