Wednesday, February 29, 2012
Photo of the week, February 29th
Creative damming of streams across the country provides much needed water for livestock and crop farmers. Here we can clearly see the regular cow-tracks to and from the waterhole thus created. At times such damming also increases human bathing and 'relief' activities, coupled with the opportunity for development of certain water snails, and, with it, an increased risk of Schistosomiasis (Bilharzia) transmission. A National Forum to discuss the thousands of kilometres of potentially infected lake are river banks in Ghana will be held on the 15th March 2012. Perhaps, as a result of this, we will see the end of Shistosomiasis in our lifetimes - if we all work together.... Photo courtesy of Integrated National Schistosomiasis Control Initiative (INSCI) team www.medicineonthemove.org'
Monday, February 27, 2012
February 27th, 2012
Fresh Air Matters... with Capt. Yaw
The small airborne ‘machine’ micro-buzzed into position, carefully avoiding detection. Stealthy, apart from that tiny buzz, that could only be detected once it was too late. Sensing the target ahead, it swiftly and deftly landed and delivered its deadly load, at the same time stealing, perhaps even spilling, human blood. Then, with the speed of a viper the child’s hand knocked the flying killer to the ground, destroyed, but sadly too late – its parasitic passenger had already been delivered to the child’s bloodstream.
We are all too familiar with the deadly acts of the mosquitoes – natures killer squadrons of malaria-transmitting sub-gram flying ‘machines’ – each one discrete, annoying and devastating. Another of nature’s light-weight flying insect miracles is very different. The butterfly, resplendent in colours that inspire awe and bring jaw-dropping silence to the crowd when they majestically land on a flower, with greater precision than any surgeons hands. Then there is the honey-bee, capable of flying, navigating and sharing knowledge of a food source, pollinating flowers for prosperity and making honey, propolis and more for the benefit of themselves and the careful apiculturist. Of course, the bee also carries its own defence mechanisms too!
Natures flying machines, like the flying machines of mankind, have a host of applications – some seemingly purely negative (although the mosquito eating bats seem to rather like the delicacy of human-blood-filled-flying-snacks!).
All too often focus is made on fast aircraft, large aircraft, fighting aircraft – and, as with the insects of nature’s world, the lighter end gets overlooked, despite their numbers and amazing range of abilities and economic potential (consider the silk moth, bees, bio-control insects, etc.).
It is all too easy to get excited about the massive aircraft, without reflection on the high maintenance-hours to flight-hours ratio. The Globemaster has over twenty maintenance hours per flying hour! Perhaps the Airbus A380 is magnificent, but it is not something you want to feed or house! Millions, nay billions of dollars have been spent and are being spent on special parking bays, taxiways, etc. to host the new giant of the skies – not to mention the fuel bill!
Interestingly, the excitement of the masses tends to focus on the big and the powerful, whilst the small and determined are perhaps able to achieve something equally amazing. Look at your house – you have doors, screens, windows with bars, and still the ants find their way to their target inside your kitchen!
In a similar way, light aircraft are about to reach into the places in Ghana that are not readily accessible by road or, indeed, by larger aircraft, and they will be working for the benefit of the people – finding their way to the target population, those in need of encouragement, training, health education, and with it community health empowerment.
We all take so many things for granted – like the beauty of the butterfly, we see it, smile and walk on, not thinking about the amazing struggle that creature has had to get to its multi-splendorous appearance and associated performance. We take for granted our access to clean water, to power, our apparent ‘instinct’ for cleanliness. Washing of hands before eating – sounds simple, seems instinctive – but it needs taught. We accept that a good bath with clean water and soap is our ‘right’ – perhaps our ‘dutiful-right’, but we fail to remember that it is a privilege to have access to it and to enjoy it. When did you last consider that the water you are bathing in could damage your health? Did you wonder if there were cercaria in the water (the little critters that penetrate your skin and cause Schistosomiasis)? Of course you didn’t! You know that you can only get that if you bathe or swim in an infected lake or river… BUT do you wonder about how those who live with the only source of water for many tens of kilometres around them infected?
With our blessings of development we seem to not only wash clean our bodies, but our consciousness about, and our consciences regarding the many people who do not have the knowledge, and even if they do, may not have the awareness of how to find solutions to living with the dangers in a manner that prevents them from being infected.
Of course, if a danger affects those in the cities and ‘developed’ portions of the world, there is a massive campaign – such as we see for HIV/AIDS. Yet, that same knowledge simply does not reach those who are remote, living in the lifestyle that we all came from at some point in our ancestry.
I believe that we all have a duty to ensure that those who have not been given the opportunity to understand the basics of health education should be given that opportunity as soon as possible, and that is the mantra of practically every government in the world. However, when accessibility is a challenge, it is all too easy to ignore the existence of the problem – unless you are ant-like in your thinking!
With creative thinking, the ant got past the barriers you put to your kitchen – slipping past the windows, bars, nets, blocks, etc. and finally discovered the knowledge of the sugar in the highest, most inaccessible cupboard! We can use that same creative thinking to send health education messages to those who are remote through lack of roads and other infrastructure, and, as I see it, the only practical solution to that is by air.
Soon there will be a trial campaign to reach many such isolated communities around the Volta Basin, it will be at a lower cost than going by road, and won’t be hampered by the rainy seasons’ muddiness, nor by the great distances. This solution is one of Ghanaian innovation and implementation – and I believe it is one that will accelerate the effort for behavioural change for health in the areas it reaches.
The moment one mentions an aircraft, people get excited about cost – perceived high cost. But I will leave you with this thought. In order to reach just forty of the isolated communities in the areas concerned, using traditional methods such a a 4x4 or a motorcycle, would take at least one week, probably more. It would consume considerable person-hours, fuel and probably result in repairs or simple failure to reach a community due to natural barriers. By air, the same result can be achieved in less than three hours. Now you ask me ‘How does this method work?’, and ‘How can it really be something that will bring about change?’ Well, I will share that with you next week, and will also be inviting all Fresh Air Matters readers to participate in a competition that will give the winner a chance to see first-hand what is happening…
In the meantime, remember to think about cercaria in many peoples bathing water when you next take your bath!
Capt. Yaw is Chief Flying Instructor and Chief Engineer at WAASPS, and lead Pilot with Medicine on the Move, Humanitarian Aviation Logistics (www.waasps.com www.medicineonthemove.org e-mail capt.yaw@waasps.com)
The small airborne ‘machine’ micro-buzzed into position, carefully avoiding detection. Stealthy, apart from that tiny buzz, that could only be detected once it was too late. Sensing the target ahead, it swiftly and deftly landed and delivered its deadly load, at the same time stealing, perhaps even spilling, human blood. Then, with the speed of a viper the child’s hand knocked the flying killer to the ground, destroyed, but sadly too late – its parasitic passenger had already been delivered to the child’s bloodstream.
We are all too familiar with the deadly acts of the mosquitoes – natures killer squadrons of malaria-transmitting sub-gram flying ‘machines’ – each one discrete, annoying and devastating. Another of nature’s light-weight flying insect miracles is very different. The butterfly, resplendent in colours that inspire awe and bring jaw-dropping silence to the crowd when they majestically land on a flower, with greater precision than any surgeons hands. Then there is the honey-bee, capable of flying, navigating and sharing knowledge of a food source, pollinating flowers for prosperity and making honey, propolis and more for the benefit of themselves and the careful apiculturist. Of course, the bee also carries its own defence mechanisms too!
Natures flying machines, like the flying machines of mankind, have a host of applications – some seemingly purely negative (although the mosquito eating bats seem to rather like the delicacy of human-blood-filled-flying-snacks!).
All too often focus is made on fast aircraft, large aircraft, fighting aircraft – and, as with the insects of nature’s world, the lighter end gets overlooked, despite their numbers and amazing range of abilities and economic potential (consider the silk moth, bees, bio-control insects, etc.).
It is all too easy to get excited about the massive aircraft, without reflection on the high maintenance-hours to flight-hours ratio. The Globemaster has over twenty maintenance hours per flying hour! Perhaps the Airbus A380 is magnificent, but it is not something you want to feed or house! Millions, nay billions of dollars have been spent and are being spent on special parking bays, taxiways, etc. to host the new giant of the skies – not to mention the fuel bill!
Interestingly, the excitement of the masses tends to focus on the big and the powerful, whilst the small and determined are perhaps able to achieve something equally amazing. Look at your house – you have doors, screens, windows with bars, and still the ants find their way to their target inside your kitchen!
In a similar way, light aircraft are about to reach into the places in Ghana that are not readily accessible by road or, indeed, by larger aircraft, and they will be working for the benefit of the people – finding their way to the target population, those in need of encouragement, training, health education, and with it community health empowerment.
We all take so many things for granted – like the beauty of the butterfly, we see it, smile and walk on, not thinking about the amazing struggle that creature has had to get to its multi-splendorous appearance and associated performance. We take for granted our access to clean water, to power, our apparent ‘instinct’ for cleanliness. Washing of hands before eating – sounds simple, seems instinctive – but it needs taught. We accept that a good bath with clean water and soap is our ‘right’ – perhaps our ‘dutiful-right’, but we fail to remember that it is a privilege to have access to it and to enjoy it. When did you last consider that the water you are bathing in could damage your health? Did you wonder if there were cercaria in the water (the little critters that penetrate your skin and cause Schistosomiasis)? Of course you didn’t! You know that you can only get that if you bathe or swim in an infected lake or river… BUT do you wonder about how those who live with the only source of water for many tens of kilometres around them infected?
With our blessings of development we seem to not only wash clean our bodies, but our consciousness about, and our consciences regarding the many people who do not have the knowledge, and even if they do, may not have the awareness of how to find solutions to living with the dangers in a manner that prevents them from being infected.
Of course, if a danger affects those in the cities and ‘developed’ portions of the world, there is a massive campaign – such as we see for HIV/AIDS. Yet, that same knowledge simply does not reach those who are remote, living in the lifestyle that we all came from at some point in our ancestry.
I believe that we all have a duty to ensure that those who have not been given the opportunity to understand the basics of health education should be given that opportunity as soon as possible, and that is the mantra of practically every government in the world. However, when accessibility is a challenge, it is all too easy to ignore the existence of the problem – unless you are ant-like in your thinking!
With creative thinking, the ant got past the barriers you put to your kitchen – slipping past the windows, bars, nets, blocks, etc. and finally discovered the knowledge of the sugar in the highest, most inaccessible cupboard! We can use that same creative thinking to send health education messages to those who are remote through lack of roads and other infrastructure, and, as I see it, the only practical solution to that is by air.
Soon there will be a trial campaign to reach many such isolated communities around the Volta Basin, it will be at a lower cost than going by road, and won’t be hampered by the rainy seasons’ muddiness, nor by the great distances. This solution is one of Ghanaian innovation and implementation – and I believe it is one that will accelerate the effort for behavioural change for health in the areas it reaches.
The moment one mentions an aircraft, people get excited about cost – perceived high cost. But I will leave you with this thought. In order to reach just forty of the isolated communities in the areas concerned, using traditional methods such a a 4x4 or a motorcycle, would take at least one week, probably more. It would consume considerable person-hours, fuel and probably result in repairs or simple failure to reach a community due to natural barriers. By air, the same result can be achieved in less than three hours. Now you ask me ‘How does this method work?’, and ‘How can it really be something that will bring about change?’ Well, I will share that with you next week, and will also be inviting all Fresh Air Matters readers to participate in a competition that will give the winner a chance to see first-hand what is happening…
In the meantime, remember to think about cercaria in many peoples bathing water when you next take your bath!
Capt. Yaw is Chief Flying Instructor and Chief Engineer at WAASPS, and lead Pilot with Medicine on the Move, Humanitarian Aviation Logistics (www.waasps.com www.medicineonthemove.org e-mail capt.yaw@waasps.com)
Wednesday, February 22, 2012
Photo of the week, February 22nd
It is always encouraging when communities make an effort to control waste, and with it associated diseases. It is disheartening when the (lack of) management of the effort creates a bigger health risk, nuisance and community challenge - as is all too often the case. We need community cohesion, supported by District, Regional and National efforts to make so many simple diseases go away, improving quality and length of life. Sadly, those simple diseases are damaging national productivity, slowing socio-economic sustainability and actually snatching lives. We must value all lives and our environment if we want to enjoy sustainable progression. Photo Courtesy of Medicine on the Move http://www.medicineonthemove.org/
Monday, February 20, 2012
February 20th, 2012
Fresh Air Matters... with Capt. Yaw
Finally the skies appear to rejecting the air-borne, visibility-reducing sand particles of the Harmattan and spitting them back to the Sahara, where they belong. The past weeks have been challenging to operate light aircraft in, and, since mid-December, we have had less than eight days of good VFR conditions at Kpong Field. Takoradi, Kumasi, Sunyani and Tamale have all had fights cancelled due to poor visibility. The funny thing is, when you are in the air during Harmattan, your vertical visibility can be perfectly acceptable. Look down, and you can make out the landmarks immediately below you without any fuss. The horizontal vis is what is really affected, due to the effect of the sunlight being scattered and re-scattered by the mini-mirror-like specs that congest the air. You are blinded by the ‘photonic disruption’ caused by the individually insignificant, air-borne detritus, which have combined to create a nightmare effect, preventing any safe progress, and the resultant grounding of many aircraft with prevention of even local training flights. It has been one of those times when the pilot tells you ‘it is better to be down here, wishing you were up there, than up there, wishing you were down here’.
Flying is not like driving, not at all. It is easier. Yes, I said it is easier! On the road, if you make an error of a metre you will probably hit something – and possibly kill somebody. In the air, pilots can be a kilometre or two off the centre line of their course and still be perfectly safe – that is why air-corridors are so wide! Imagine a road thirty kilometres wide, with little traffic and more rules! I have always said, and stick by the statement ‘I can teach anybody to fly a plane in one hour’. It really isn’t difficult to fly a plane around the sky. Now, if you want to be able to control where it goes with any accuracy, take-off and land, well, that takes a longer time – a lot longer!
Sadly, few people learn to fly, and the drop-out rate worldwide is incredibly high. One statistic I read recently indicates over eighty percent of people who start learning to fly drop out. Why? Well, there are many think-tanks asking the same questions! Cost is a big one, because it is not cheap, and it never will be. Frankly, if people took learning to drive a car as seriously as learning to fly, maintenance of vehicles as seriously as maintenance of aircraft, and the maintenance of roads as seriously as aerodrome maintenance, learning to drive would be much more expensive – and the accidents on the roads would probably be reduced to a mere trickle.
Therein lies a challenge – how can you make flying affordable without compromising safety? However, we should better ask ‘how can we make driving safer without it becoming no longer affordable?’ The answer is not something I hold in my fingers, but it is clear, that if we want to ensure safety in the skies, we need to maintain standards, and that costs money, and since we apparently don’t mind accidents on the roads (the statistics indicate this), we keep the cost of motoring down, especially in the developing nations.
A Metro bus proves the point for me. I was driving in Accra, something that I detest and consider a punishment, when this Metro bus pulled up alongside my car, leaving a bare fifteen millimetres between my wing-mirror and the bashed, scratched and otherwise variously scathed side of the mass transport solution of the city. We crawled along side-by-side, unable to improve on the separation distance, since a taxi was too close for comfort on the other side. The taxi had also seen better days.
I worked relentlessly to keep the precious barrier of air around my vehicle from further erosion. The Metro bus gained on the advance and I was soon eye-to-eye with the rear tyre.
The rear tyre, looking at me through my window, was as bald and smooth as any top-model’s legs! In fact, add a little oil and you would have sworn it had been machined to the highest standards for smoothness and low-drag resistance! I have never seen such a silky tyre – it was a work of art!
The policeman ahead of me was alternately sucking water from a bag and talking on his mobile phone whilst guiding the traffic jam slowly forwards. He, like many other policemen in the life of that tyre, would see it, admire it, and wave it on. Doing their part in keeping the costs of transport down in our country. The same for the taxi, who no longer has any working seatbelts, for the numerous lorries without working lights, for the Mama-Wagons filled to spilling with women and children packed like sardines to prevent movement in the event of another pothole in the road. Yes, these are all efforts being made to keep the cost of road transportation down.
The young men who come to me with a ‘driving licence’ and who still can’t tell me the basic road signs or what a continuous white line means are also those who have benefitted from the reduced costs of road transport growth. The poor road maintenance and acceptance of pot-hole infested and road marking erased black-top are also contributing to that low-financial-cost of transport.
In some countries the penalty for a bald tire or poor brakes is more than the cost of replacement or repair, which helps to improve safety, but increases the cost of transport. In some countries, only those who have excellent driving standards are allowed to drive, and if they don’t demonstrate good driving they lose the right to drive. But it pushes up the cost of road transport.
So, all these little bits of ‘low-cost-detritus’ blur our vision, losing us visibility of what we are really dealing with. Our very own ‘low-safety-standard-Harmattan-haze’. A haze that I hate to travel in, seeing the dangers, and with them the damage to, and cost in, human life. Based on the maimed and dead bodies we hear about, and unwillingly witness, on the roads, the reality of that cost is large quantities of blood of the citizens. Should that same blood be spilt in an air-accident much noise would be made, but it isn’t because of the safety rules and enforcements (thank you GCAA, FAA and ICAO).
So, a decision has to be made. Do we save money or do we save lives? I know what I want to save, and I know that I train my crews to high standards, both for flying and driving, because I value life more than anything else.
We need to change the safety standards, and not just on the roads. We need to ground some traffic, ground some construction sites, ground some machine shops, ground some chop-bars, and ensure that there is a clear vision of what safety is all about. We need to do that now, today, this very hour, before any more people are injured or lives are lost through lackadaisical attitudes and lack of courage to stand up for safety. Lives depend on it - including yours and mine and all those we know and love. Let’s change the system before many more of them are maimed or die unnecessarily.
Capt. Yaw is Chief Flying Instructor and Chief Engineer at WAASPS, and lead Pilot with Medicine on the Move, Humanitarian Aviation Logistics (www.waasps.com www.medicineonthemove.org e-mail capt.yaw@waasps.com)
Finally the skies appear to rejecting the air-borne, visibility-reducing sand particles of the Harmattan and spitting them back to the Sahara, where they belong. The past weeks have been challenging to operate light aircraft in, and, since mid-December, we have had less than eight days of good VFR conditions at Kpong Field. Takoradi, Kumasi, Sunyani and Tamale have all had fights cancelled due to poor visibility. The funny thing is, when you are in the air during Harmattan, your vertical visibility can be perfectly acceptable. Look down, and you can make out the landmarks immediately below you without any fuss. The horizontal vis is what is really affected, due to the effect of the sunlight being scattered and re-scattered by the mini-mirror-like specs that congest the air. You are blinded by the ‘photonic disruption’ caused by the individually insignificant, air-borne detritus, which have combined to create a nightmare effect, preventing any safe progress, and the resultant grounding of many aircraft with prevention of even local training flights. It has been one of those times when the pilot tells you ‘it is better to be down here, wishing you were up there, than up there, wishing you were down here’.
Flying is not like driving, not at all. It is easier. Yes, I said it is easier! On the road, if you make an error of a metre you will probably hit something – and possibly kill somebody. In the air, pilots can be a kilometre or two off the centre line of their course and still be perfectly safe – that is why air-corridors are so wide! Imagine a road thirty kilometres wide, with little traffic and more rules! I have always said, and stick by the statement ‘I can teach anybody to fly a plane in one hour’. It really isn’t difficult to fly a plane around the sky. Now, if you want to be able to control where it goes with any accuracy, take-off and land, well, that takes a longer time – a lot longer!
Sadly, few people learn to fly, and the drop-out rate worldwide is incredibly high. One statistic I read recently indicates over eighty percent of people who start learning to fly drop out. Why? Well, there are many think-tanks asking the same questions! Cost is a big one, because it is not cheap, and it never will be. Frankly, if people took learning to drive a car as seriously as learning to fly, maintenance of vehicles as seriously as maintenance of aircraft, and the maintenance of roads as seriously as aerodrome maintenance, learning to drive would be much more expensive – and the accidents on the roads would probably be reduced to a mere trickle.
Therein lies a challenge – how can you make flying affordable without compromising safety? However, we should better ask ‘how can we make driving safer without it becoming no longer affordable?’ The answer is not something I hold in my fingers, but it is clear, that if we want to ensure safety in the skies, we need to maintain standards, and that costs money, and since we apparently don’t mind accidents on the roads (the statistics indicate this), we keep the cost of motoring down, especially in the developing nations.
A Metro bus proves the point for me. I was driving in Accra, something that I detest and consider a punishment, when this Metro bus pulled up alongside my car, leaving a bare fifteen millimetres between my wing-mirror and the bashed, scratched and otherwise variously scathed side of the mass transport solution of the city. We crawled along side-by-side, unable to improve on the separation distance, since a taxi was too close for comfort on the other side. The taxi had also seen better days.
I worked relentlessly to keep the precious barrier of air around my vehicle from further erosion. The Metro bus gained on the advance and I was soon eye-to-eye with the rear tyre.
The rear tyre, looking at me through my window, was as bald and smooth as any top-model’s legs! In fact, add a little oil and you would have sworn it had been machined to the highest standards for smoothness and low-drag resistance! I have never seen such a silky tyre – it was a work of art!
The policeman ahead of me was alternately sucking water from a bag and talking on his mobile phone whilst guiding the traffic jam slowly forwards. He, like many other policemen in the life of that tyre, would see it, admire it, and wave it on. Doing their part in keeping the costs of transport down in our country. The same for the taxi, who no longer has any working seatbelts, for the numerous lorries without working lights, for the Mama-Wagons filled to spilling with women and children packed like sardines to prevent movement in the event of another pothole in the road. Yes, these are all efforts being made to keep the cost of road transportation down.
The young men who come to me with a ‘driving licence’ and who still can’t tell me the basic road signs or what a continuous white line means are also those who have benefitted from the reduced costs of road transport growth. The poor road maintenance and acceptance of pot-hole infested and road marking erased black-top are also contributing to that low-financial-cost of transport.
In some countries the penalty for a bald tire or poor brakes is more than the cost of replacement or repair, which helps to improve safety, but increases the cost of transport. In some countries, only those who have excellent driving standards are allowed to drive, and if they don’t demonstrate good driving they lose the right to drive. But it pushes up the cost of road transport.
So, all these little bits of ‘low-cost-detritus’ blur our vision, losing us visibility of what we are really dealing with. Our very own ‘low-safety-standard-Harmattan-haze’. A haze that I hate to travel in, seeing the dangers, and with them the damage to, and cost in, human life. Based on the maimed and dead bodies we hear about, and unwillingly witness, on the roads, the reality of that cost is large quantities of blood of the citizens. Should that same blood be spilt in an air-accident much noise would be made, but it isn’t because of the safety rules and enforcements (thank you GCAA, FAA and ICAO).
So, a decision has to be made. Do we save money or do we save lives? I know what I want to save, and I know that I train my crews to high standards, both for flying and driving, because I value life more than anything else.
We need to change the safety standards, and not just on the roads. We need to ground some traffic, ground some construction sites, ground some machine shops, ground some chop-bars, and ensure that there is a clear vision of what safety is all about. We need to do that now, today, this very hour, before any more people are injured or lives are lost through lackadaisical attitudes and lack of courage to stand up for safety. Lives depend on it - including yours and mine and all those we know and love. Let’s change the system before many more of them are maimed or die unnecessarily.
Capt. Yaw is Chief Flying Instructor and Chief Engineer at WAASPS, and lead Pilot with Medicine on the Move, Humanitarian Aviation Logistics (www.waasps.com www.medicineonthemove.org e-mail capt.yaw@waasps.com)
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