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In this chapter, we first explore the similarities and differences between the current hospital crisis of iatrogenic patient deaths, which are now the fourth most common cause of death in UK,1 and the sixth most common in US,2 and the theories that have been used to explain and manage organizational crises that occur in other industries. We then critically examine the studies to date that attempt to predict the in-hospital patient management crises. Finally, we examine the place of hard defenses such as electronic monitoring and alert systems to protect patients from the healthcare system. In the longer run, there needs to be a significant and fundamental change to the ˵soft defenses,″ such as the training of all our frontline healthcare workers, so that such potential patient crises are predicted and managed earlier to prevent iatrogenic morbidity and mortality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Today, thirty-three years later, however repainted and stuccoed, the ceilings and façades of this unconquered city still seem to preserve the stain-like imprints of its inhabitants' last gasps and last gazes. Or perhaps it's just bad paint and bad stucco. “On 8 July 1945,” wrote architect A. K. Barutchev in 1946, “Leningrad met its defenders.” In the southern reaches of the city, not far from the former front line, three wood and gypsum triumphal arches provided grandiose – if ephemeral – backdrops for the crowds greeting the troops returning victorious from the West. The arch on Stachek Street near the Kirov Factory was topped with an artillery piece and adorned with silhouettes of Vladimir Lenin and Josef Stalin (Illustration 10). The Kirov men treated the returning soldiers to shots of vodka; the women gave them wildflowers. On Obukhovskoi Oborony, an architrave set on two massive pylons declared “Glory to the Red Army.” Under the arch on Mezhdunarodnii (now Moskovskii) Prospekt that proclaimed “Glory to the Hero Victors,” Ekaterina Leonidova, a “hero mother” with at least seven children, offered the commanding general a loaf of bread, the traditional symbol of hospitality. The three triumphal arches had been hastily constructed. Planned by groups of Leningrad architects in just twenty-four hours, they were built in a week. Nonetheless, Barutchev emphasized that they drew upon a glorious precedent. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Nothing but a legend, you say? You want nothing but facts? Facts are perishable, believe me, only legends remain, like the soul after the body, or perfume in the wake of a woman. The almost nine-hundred-day siege of Leningrad constituted one of the most dramatic and tragic episodes of World War II. Even before it ended, the siege became one of the war's most widely told stories. Both the Soviet and the Allied press transformed besieged Leningrad into legend, a compelling story of steadfastness and heroism. Inside the blockaded city, Leningraders undertook a startling array of commemorative projects, ranging from keeping diaries to producing documentary films. Perhaps the best known of these contemporary commemorations is Dmitrii Shostakovich's monumental Leningrad Symphony. Begun in blockaded Leningrad, the piece had more than fifty international premiers in 1942 and became an emblem of the city's suffering and its strength. In the summer of 1942, the remnants of the Leningrad Philharmonic, supplemented by musicians stationed at the Leningrad front, performed the symphony in Leningrad itself. Broadcast by radio throughout the city, the concert immediately became part of the epic story of the blockade. One of the violins played that evening became a museum piece. The extraordinary and unexpected plight of blockaded Leningrad easily lent itself to mythmaking. Just weeks after the surprise invasion of 22 June 1941, rapidly advancing German troops threatened the city. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This chapter begins with a brief description of Blantyre District and surrounding areas of the Southern Province of colonial Malawi in the late 1940s. It then goes on to detail the events of the famine of 1949–50. This description focuses on Blantyre District where the famine was most severe, but it also draws on material covering a wider geographical area, in an attempt to relate government policy to local experience. As the famine progressed, so the linkages between local communities and wider economic structures became more crucial. The narrative traces these linkages, moving backwards and forwards between the local setting and a larger world. Its history is written in its lay-out. There are none of the wide streets, running at right-angles, typical of Bulawayo, Johannesburg, Nairobi, or other African towns. Like Topsy,it has just ‘growed“. The town of Blantyre was prosperous in the late 1940s. Blantyre had never been the administrative capital of colonial Malawi, but along with its ‘twin’ town, Limbe, it formed the commercial centre of the country. It was a town dominated by Europeans and tied closely to the settler economy. With high tobacco prices, an expansion of construction, and an influx of demo bed African soldiers flush with money, the immediate post-war period was a good time for commerce. Blantyre had grown, somewhat raggedly, from its foundation as a ‘township’ in 1895, when it had been literally built around the twin pillars of Commerce and Christianity, in the form of the Church of Scotland mission on one ridge and a handful of trading companies on another. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]