The Michigan Daily - michigandaily.com
Wednesday, November 25, 2009 - 7
AFTER THEY WALK
From Page 1
means. For Vasquez and The Cart-
er Center, this means limiting the
worm's transmission by protect-
ing local water sources - where
the parasite thrives - and educat-
ing the people of southern Sudan
about the devastating impact of
the Guinea worm.
And it appears the efforts have
been paying off.
In 2007, The Carter Center
reported 9,585 total cases of Guinea
worm disease worldwide.
One year later, the center report-
ed a full, 51-percent reduction in
cases, which totaled just 4,619.
This year, only 1,930 cases have
been reported from January to
June 2009. And if this rate contin-
ues through the end of the year, the
Center could see another drop of
about 17 percent.
When the Center began fight-
ing the spread of the worm in 1986,
more than 3.5 million cases existed
in 20 countries throughout Africa
and Asia. Now there are less than
5,000 cases in six African countries,
a 99.8-percent drop in 23 years. If
this continues, Guinea worm dis-
ease should be completely eradi-
cated in the near future, a feat that
hasn't happened since Smallpox
was declared eradicated in 1979.
Of the six countries that still
report cases of the disease, Sudan
has by far the largest number of
existing cases. The Carter Center
reported in 2008 that Sudan has
78 percent of the remaining cases
worldwide; the majority of these
occur in the southern regions
where Vasquez is working.
Vasquez grew up in Ann Arbor
and studied political science at the
University. Just out of college, he
worked as a researcher at Univer-
sity Hospital. Unsure of his future
and hesitant to follow his friends to
law school, Vasquez opted to travel
instead.
His travels led him all over the
world, and at one point he found
himself in West Africa, spending
time in several countries and visit-
ing a friend who was working with
the Peace Corps in Burkina Faso.
It was during these travels that he
met the Ghana country director for
The Carter Center who led him to
his job.
"It just happened by chance," he
said.
In June 2006, just two months
later and with no public health
experience, he was in Ghana.
That's when he started work-
ing with The Carter Center. After
an 18-month stay in Ghana's mid-
dle belt near Lake Volta, Vasquez
moved to Savelugu, a smaller town
in northern Ghana. In Savelugu,
Vasquez ran a Guinea worm case
containment center where he
helped to identify Guinea worm
cases and contain infected the peo-
ple so they could not contaminate
local water sources, where the dis-
ease is easily transmitted.
While working in Ghana,
Vasquez became quite knowl-
edgeable of the traditional politi-
cal hierarchy of the area. He
began working with the commu-
nity to pass bylaws pertaining to
Guinea worm and saw 90-percent
reductions of the disease in some
areas, 100-percent reductions in
others.
In December2008,Vasquezrelo-
cated to Sudan, "the last frontier
on the difficult path to eradicating
Guinea worm disease," according
to The Carter Center's website.
"It's like the end of the Earth,"
Vasquez said of the situation in his
current home. "There is a reason
why the last case of Guinea worm
will be reported in Sudan."
He's been in the country for
about a year, and has now taken on
a new managerial role as a deputy
technical adviser for The Carter
Center, which means he has to split
his time between field and office.
"When I go to the field now, most
of what I'm doing is supporting the
system of surveillance," he said.
By surveillance, Vasquez is
referring to how he and his team
understand the surrounding areas
and the local people! They work to
build relationships with the local
communities, helping them to bet-
ter identify Guinea worm cases and
locate potentially infected water
sources for chemical treatment.
Unlike in Ghana, where people
are more hesitant to trust mass
chemical dumps into water sourc-
es, Vasquez said the Sudanese are
more willing to accept the water
treatment.
In the office, Vasquez said one of
the biggest challenges comes with
managing human resources. Since
entering this position, Vasquez
said he has learned to form realis-
tic expectations of his team and the
people they work with in the field.
Vasquez's team includes Ugan-
dans, Ethiopians and Ghanaians.
Half of his technical staff is made
of Sudanese nationals, though, and
the other half is made of Americans
recruited by The Carter Center.
"The level of education just isn't
there," he said, especially since
the nationals "have all just been
through a civil war."
Vasquez checking a water source in Savelugu, Ghana. Ghana is one of several African countries grappling with Guinea worms.
Many of his workers grew up
in camps during the war and were
aligned with opposing sides. Now
in the field, Vasquez said a large
part of the job is adjusting to his
team's steep learning curve.
But despite the other challenges
of the job, the core of the battle is
always helping victims ofthe worm.
"Once in a while ... you come
across a case and connect with a
patient in a very personal way," he
said. "Certainly that's the most spe-
cial part of the job."
Vasquez is constantly learning to
deal with language barriers. Hav-
ing been in Sudan less than a year,
he said he's still trying to pick up
bits of the language here and there.
The day-to-day operations of
running a humanitarian organiza-
tion in a war-torn country can get
sticky, though.
Security, Vasquez said, remains
one of his operation's biggest chal-
lenges.
Vasquez said there is constant
risk assessment, both in moving
technical staff in the field and in
moving expensive cargo across the
country. This becomes critical, he
,said, when raising questions like,
"is this important enough when we
have to have an armed escort?"
After two years, Vasquez is
unsure about whether he will pur-
sue a career in public health. He
said he is lucky to have had this
opportunity to work with The
Carter Center, and that there is a
chance he might look into other
ways to help fight poverty, includ-
ing through business.
"I have seen firsthand how pub-
lic health can help economic devel-
opment," he said.
While working long days in
demanding environments, Vasquez
said his two biggest takeaways
from his experience are humility
and patience.
The future may be uncertain for
Vasquez, but for now, he said he is
going to continue battling the worm
in Sudan - at least for a little while.
"I know I'll never get another
chance like this," he said.
CONVENTION
From Page 1
basic democracy and free speech
that the MSA constitution pro-
vides to students," Stenvig said.
Stenvig is a leader of the Defend
Affirmative Action Party - a party
that has held MSA representative
seats over the past several years
but has never won executive seats.
Though they are no longer affili-
ated with a party, Mahanti and
Rorro both ran with the Michi-
gan Vision Party. Two of the eight
MSA representatives appointed to
the constitutional convention are
MVP members.
Schon asserted in the proceed-
ings that different voices are
required to update the constitu-
tion in an effective manner.
"The reason an election is
required is for constituents to
elect them," Schon said. "That's
the only way changes are going to
be made."
Rorro, who served as chair of the
Constitutional Convention, said
after the meeting that MSA has
other means of proposing amend-
ments to the student body, though
they are less efficient.
The student body must vote on
any amendment to the constitu-
tion, no matter how small. The
constitution requires one of three
methods for an amendment to be
added to the ballot, so that it can
be voted on by the entire student
population.
MSA can garner a two-thirds
majority vote to get amendments
added to the campus-wide ballot.
Alternatively, a student or student
group can petition MSA to add
proposed-amendments to the bal-
lot. Each proposed amendment
requires 1,000 student signatures.
The last option, which MSA
officials chose and believe to be
the most efficient for a major
overhaul of campus policy, is to
assemble a constitutional conven-
tion to present an entire amended
constitutional document, which
the student body can then vote to
approve.
The most current Constitu-
tional Convention was preparing
a document to be voted on by the
student body during the March
campus-wide student government
elections.
CSJ ruled that in order for a
convention to convene, individual
colleges and student groups must
elect delegates from their schools
or groups to serve on the conven-
tion.
MSA representatives drew a
parallel between the election pro-
cess used for the convention and
the process used to elect student
representatives to the Department
of Public Safety Police Oversight
Committee. The DPS Oversight
Committee is a body intended to
check the power of DPS that has
recently come under fire for prob-
lems with the election processes
used to select faculty, student and
staff representatives.
Both the DPS Oversight Com-
mittee and a constitutional con-
vention call for an "election" to
determine student members. In
both cases, MSA representatives
determined that an internal "nom-
ination and confirmation process"
would be sufficient to elect del-
egates.
Brusstar and Benson used the
DPS Oversight Committee selec-
tion process as evidence of the
constitutionality of their actions.
However, the three CSJ justices
who heard the case - Chief Justice
Daniel Horwitz, Associate Chief
Justice Jonathan Beitner and Jus-
tice Michael Huston - ruled that
this process did not constitute an
"election."
"That's a point where Iguess I
have to disagree with the court,"
Brusstar said after the trial. "It's
my interpretation that that is, in
fact, a valid form of election."
The court decided the Consti-
tutional Convention did not pro-
portionally represent the student
body, which the student constitu-
tion requires.
Benson said MSA will consider
appealingthe overall decisionafter
the written decisions are released.
MSA has until Monday to file an
appeal to CSJ.
Rorro said despite the ruling,
the executive board intended to
represent as many parts of cam-
pus as possible through the selec-
tion process, but that "obviously it
wasn't enough."
"But now that we're re-focus-
ing it we want to make sure that
we do get all those opinions and
all those voices in the room," he
said. "But no, we're not stopping,
and we really want to give Michi-
gan a document that will live for
a long time and ensure that stu-
dent government works for its
constituents."
Rorro said he expects the
amendment process will continue,
just through different means.
"There are a 'couple of differ-
ent ways to have an amendment
to the Constitution," he said. "I
think that our re-writing efforts
so far have been very productive
and I'm really excited to continue
them."
Rorro suggested that the mem-
bers already selected to be on the
constitutional convention might
continue their re-writing efforts.
Those students would work to
obtain the 1,000 studentsignatures
needed to put the amendments on
the ballot for the all-student vote
in March.
"I believe the next step is con-
tinuing the re-writing process,
ensuring that all constituencies
are represented in a good way," he
said.
Rorro added that if the conven-
tion decides to take this option, it
would no longer be an MSA-run
initiative but would be a separate
student group.
Alternatively,Mahinti said
MSA representatives might inter-
nally propose amendments for
approval by the assembly, which
would then enable them to be put
on the student-wide ballot.
"I think that it's something the
assembly has wanted to do," he
said. "I think it's something that
the assembly will still carry for-
ward."
Mahanti said he is not sure if
MSA will initiate another con-
vention using the guidelines laid
out by the CSJ ruling, but that the
assembly is "back to square one."
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CHILDCARE
For Thursday, Nov. 26, 2009
ARIES
(March 21 toApril 19)
Be cautious when in discussions about
shared property today, because you
might not have all the facts. Something
could sway you toward being generous
to the point where you might later regret
it.
TAURUS
(April 20 to May 20)
A partner orclose friend might dispp-
point you for some reason today.
However, part of your disappointment
might be because you had unrealistic
expectations.
GEMINI
(May 21to June 20)
Be careful with health issues today.
Guard against any kind of misuse of
drugs or questionable food that might
make you sick. Be aware.
CANCER
(June 21 to July 22)
Some kind of starry-eyed romance
could be a source of disappointment for
you today. Remember: Unexpressed
expectations almost always lead to dis-
appointment.
LEO,
(July 23 to Aug. 22)
Be extra patient with family members
today. If ynur expectations or ideals are
too high, you will feel disuppointed. It's
fan better to expect less and be happy.
VIRGO
(Aug. 23 to Sept. 22)
Relations with relatives and siblings
are confusing today; nevertheless, they
are well-meaning. Remain forthright.
Don't skirt the truth to avoid a con-
frontation.
LIBRA
(Sept. 23 to Oct. 22)
Be careful with financial matters
today. If shopping, keep your receipts.
Some kind of deception is possible. Or
you might kid yourself about money
matters with respect to how to earn it or
spend it.
SCORPIO
(Oct. 23 toNov. 2 1)
You feel idealistic about others today.
You want everyone tobe happy. You also
feel sympathetic toward others. (Just
make sure you don't expect too much
from people. Keep your feet on the
ground.)
SAGITTARIUS
(Nov. 22 to Dec. 2 1)
You're willing to go out of your way
to help someone today. You're ready to
put your interests second to the interests
of someone else who is needy. This is
very good; however, don't be a martyr.
CAPRICORN
(Dec. 22to Jan, 19)
Before you share your hopes and
dreams for the future with others, make
sure you have a sympathetic audience.
Today is a bit tricky.
AQUARIUS
(Jan. 20 to Feb. 18)
It's easy to idolize someone older,
richer or more experienced than you
today. In fact, you might develop a crush
on your boss or someone in authority.
PISCES
(Feb. 19to March 20)
Your appreciution of beauty is aroused
today. Therefore, give yourself a chace
to enjoy punks, museums, galleries and
beautiful places.
YOU BORN TODAY You're individ-
ualistic, and you have an excellent imag-
ination. (You have your own style.) You
need lots of freedom because you're
spontaneous and creative. You don't like
to be held back by others or external reg-
imens. By your mid-20s, you become
fixated on status, respect and success.
Ironically, by your 50s, these matter
much less. Work hard to build or con-
struct something this year.
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