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Assignment No.4

For this assignment we'll be doing five (5) things: River Blindness, Guinea Worm, Malaria, AIDS, and one on your own search.

I. RIVER BLINDNESS. Go to:

http://www.who.ch/programmes/ctd/diseases/onch/onchmain.htm

Go to Fact about Onchicerciasis (or River Blindness)
1. Where is the disease primarily found?
2. How is the disease controlled in West Africa?
3. What does the disease do to humans?
4. What are the "risk factors" for the disease or what causes the disease?
If excited, might want to go back to further information and look over and for a bonus, tell Prof. Good what you found.
II. GUINEA WORM. Go to:

http://woodland.bio.ic.ac.uk/fgn/pnb/dracmed.html
This is about Dracunculus medinensis: The Guinea Worm
1. Where is the disease primarily found and what aninals (including humans) is affected?
2. Briefly summarize the life cycle of the guinea worm?
3. Go back and go to:

http://www.who.ch/programmes/ctd/diseases/drac/dracdis.htm
4. What are the reasons why this disease affects so many people in sub-Saharan Africa?
5. What are the two basic methods used to control the disease?
III. MALARIA. Go to:

http://www.idrc.ca/books/reports/1996/01-08e.html
It's called Malaria: A Deadly Disease
1. What is the vector for malaria (Be specific)
2. Why is malaria considered to be a disease of poverty?
3. Why is the malaria situation worsening around the world?
Go back and go to:

http://www.idrc.ca/books/reports/1996/01-02e.html
called Battle Against Malaria
4. What is the women in the opening photograph doing?
5. In Africa, the malaria parasite accounts for at least _____percent of all childhood mortality below age five.
6. Summarize the methods here to prevent malaria among children?
IV AIDS. Go to:

http://www.ndsu.nodak.edu/instruct/balachan/AIDS/aids2.htm
This will be a series of 63 pages dealing with AIDS or how at North Dakota State University they are using the Internet for insturctional purposes. We will be looking at some of the pages. You will notice different pages numbered Aids2, Aids 3, and so forth. At the top left of each page is an arrow point to the right (and you can go back by clicking the left arrow). To start run through the pages by clicking the right arrow and stop at page 10 called World Regional Shares of Actual AIDS Cases.
1. What % is in Africa?
2. Keep clicking the right or forward arrow and stop at 13. How many pediatric HIV infectins in Africa (interpret graph)?
3. Go forward to #16 and HIV Deathes 1995 and of the 1,300,000 deaths give total number and percent according to children, adult females, and adult males?
4. Go to #19 and see Figure 1 called Reported and Estimated AIDS cases in Adults from late 70's/early 80's until mid-1996. What percent of the 7.7 million cases were in Africa?
5. Go to #20. It'll be Figure 2 HIV Totals Map. How many infected in Sub-Saharan Africa of global total of 27.9 million?
6. Go to #29 about Possible AID diffusion pathways with Euro=American Origins. Briefly describe diffusion arows?
7. Go to 33 showing African AIDS Belt. Which country had the largest % based on total number of African cumulative cases. What about Tanzania?
8. Go to 35. Male Circumcision and Female Mutilitation. Any association with AIDS?
There are about 25 more pages to go to. Take one of them and summarize what you saw.
9. There was a lot of stuff here from North Dakota State Univ. How would you use this information if you had to teach a class on AIDS?
V. Go to one of the Search Engines and surf about diseases in Africa. You could search for Tropical Diseases, Dengue Fever, Ebola Disease, World Health Organization, Center for Disease Control, Tsetse fly, African diseases, cholera, yellow fever, endemic diseases, pandemic diseases, epidemic diseases, disease vectors, any subject on pages 334-335 of your textbook. You can do anything relating to diseases. Do the following:
1. Give the author, address, and who published/created the site
2. Analyze the content and tell how useful/user friendly it is
3. When was the site established/updated, or how often should it be updated?
4. Who is the audience for this site/how applicable is it to what we're studying/relate to Medical Geography, etc.
5. Rating: 1=Outstanding, a must see; 2=Very good, well above average; 3=helpful, functional; 4=would seldom us, nothing special; 5=wouldn't recommend under any circumstance.
E-mail answers to Prof. Good. As always, comment on Internet Resources, what you liked and disliked, etc.
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