Friday, February 19, 2010

Gaza, Palestine

"It is possible that high nitrate levels have contributed to some shocking changes in the infant mortality rate (IMR) among Palestinians in the Gaza Strip and West Bank. IMR, widely used as an indicator of population health, has stalled among Palestinians since the 1990s and now shows signs of increasing. This is because the leading causes of infant mortality have changed from infectious and diarrheal diseases to prematurity, low birth weight and congenital malformations. These trends are alarming (and rare in the region), because infant mortality rates have been declining in almost all developing countries, including Iraq."


Sara Roy in The Nation

2 comments:

maggie said...

hello rami,

i just came across this blog and wanted to congratulate you for your wonderful work. so glad to see someone pulling together material on the region from this angle.

you may be interested to check out a couple of articles i did on gaza several months ago:
http://food.theatlantic.com/abroad/eating-under-siege.php

in this spirit, i'm now trying to put together a book (with laila al hammad) on food in gaza, weaving recipes, life stories and food economy under seige... but we're having a hard time finding support. any ideas?

glad to see you're out there, and would love to be in touch.

yours,
maggie

Rami Zurayk said...

Hi Maggie

Thanks for the comment. I had not come across your articles, which I am linking to now.

Great book idea! If you want, you can write me at ramizurayk@gmail.com and we can talk more about it and other things.

Cheers

Rami