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Access to antivenoms in cases of snakebite continues to be an important public health issue around the world, especially in rural areas with poorly developed health care systems. This study aims to evaluate therapeutic itineraries and antivenom accessibility following snakebites in the states of Oaxaca and Chiapas in southern Mexico. Employing an intercultural health approach that seeks to understand and bridge allopathic and traditional medical perceptions and practices, we conducted field interviews with 47 snakebite victims, documenting the therapeutic itineraries of 54 separate snakebite incidents that occurred between 1977 and 2023. Most victims used traditional remedies as a first line of treatment, often to withstand the rigors of a long journey to find antivenoms. The main obstacles to antivenom access were distance, poor antivenom availability, and cost. Standard antivenom treatment is highly valued and sought after, even as traditional beliefs and practices persist within a cultural framework known as the "hot-cold" system. The findings are crucial for informing future enhancements to antivenom distribution systems, health education initiatives, and other interventions aimed at mitigating the impact of snakebites in the region. Author summary: Every year, hundreds of thousands of people worldwide are killed, disabled, or disfigured by bites from venomous snakes. Snakebite is especially dangerous in rural areas of the global south, where victims often must travel long distances to clinics or hospitals to receive antivenom treatment. What sorts of obstacles do snakebite victims face in their search for antivenom? And why do people choose traditional remedies, such as homeopathic treatments, even though these have limited evidence of effectiveness against snakebite envenoming? To answer these questions, we conducted field research in rural areas of Oaxaca and Chiapas states in southern Mexico in 2023, including interviews with 47 snakebite victims. In line with other studies, we found that the main obstacles to antivenom access are distance, cost, and scarcity of antivenom supply. And by listening more closely to victims' accounts of their therapeutic itineraries, we have a better understanding of why people might choose traditional remedies for snakebite. These reasons include long-established cultural frameworks about the causes of illness and the need to alleviate pain to withstand the long journey to conventional treatment. By taking an intercultural approach, which emphasizes mutual respect and understanding between Western and indigenous health belief systems, we can improve access to antivenom, health education initiatives, and other interventions aimed at mitigating the impact of snakebites in Mexico and beyond. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

He argues, mostly convincingly, that the Pinochet regime's approach to urban planning from 1973 to 1990 integrated three distinct but related streams of thought: hygiene or public health, geopolitics, and neoliberalism. Pinochet described this entity as the "amoeba-state", with unstable and vulnerable borders, which would either absorb, or be absorbed by, neighboring states also fighting for their espacio vital - an evocation of Ratzel's key idea of Lebensraum. In this ambitious book, historian César Leyton Robinson traces the genealogy of the Chilean dictatorship's governing ideology and its application to the remaking of urban spaces. [Extracted from the article]

La ciencia de la erradicación: Modernidad urbana y neoliberalismo en Santiago de Chile, 1973-1990 by César Leyton Robinson (review) Según Leyton Robinson, los planes de la dictadura para Santiago reflejaban una larga obsesión de las élites políticas y científicas chilenas por el orden urbano, la limpieza y la seguridad. El programa de erradicación del régimen - la reubicación forzosa de miles de personas de asentamientos informales a nuevas localidades urbanas en el área metropolitana de Santiago - fue la culminación de varias décadas de preocupaciones de las élites ante la creciente amenaza de masas urbanas empobrecidas. [Extracted from the article]

To link to full-text access for this article, visit this link: http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jhg.2006.06.002 Byline: Eric D. Carter Abstract: This study traces the evolution of social-environmental models of malaria control in Northwest Argentina. Beginning in the 1890s, the rationale for malaria control hinged on a narrative that placed malaria as the root cause of the Northwest's chronic backwardness. Insalubrious rural and urban landscapes, underutilized agricultural potential, unproductive labor, and even racial decay were all bound together as a public health problem. The framework for understanding malaria in the environment was derived from miasmatic theory and medical geography, anchoring the disease firmly in particular landscapes. Wetlands, representing both economic waste and a public health hazard, were singled out as targets for reclamation. Thus 'environmental sanitation' techniques, especially wetland drainage, became the preferred strategy for the federal government's malaria campaign, initiated in 1907. The 'socio-ecological' orientation of the Italian malaria campaign under Fascism, in which large-scale wetland reclamation for malaria control seemed to produce a comprehensive transformation of rural land and life, had a strong influence in Argentina, further entrenching environmental sanitation methods. By the 1930s, however, it became apparent that Italy's wetlands served poorly as landscape analogues for Argentina's Northwest. In particular, the main mosquito vector in the region turned out not to be a stereotypical 'swamp breeder,' rendering pointless most wetland drainage efforts. A counter-model, which adopted the framework of ecological science, proved to be more sensitive to the behaviors and microenvironments of different mosquito species, while disentangling malaria control from the broader and mostly unrealistic social development goals of the older model. Author Affiliation: Geography Department, Millersville University of Pennsylvania, PO Box 1002, Millersville, PA 17551-0302, USA