Question 1
i) The coronavirus outbreak have seen the cohesive working of scientist and medical professionals from all over the world even when every country is closing their boundaries. Many scientist and researchers have urgently focused on this topic keeping all their researches to halt. The contribution made by these researchers are the identification and sharing of hundreds of viral genome sequences. There has been more than 200 clinical trials Dettol launched in hospitals as well as laboratories to suppress the rapid spread of this disease. University of Pittsburgh the scientist who discovered a ferret that have been exposed to covid-19 particles, which developed high fever. One of the leading virologist in University of Pittsburgh Paul Duprex have said the findings and researches to World Health organisation through a conference call. Doctor Duprex is also collaborating with Pastuer Institute in Paris and Austrian Drug Company Themis bioscience. They received funding from coalition from Epidemic preparedness innovation which is a Norway based organisation funded by Bill and Melinda Gates foundation and a group of government. On the other hand the French public Health research centre in Inserm, have sponsored for clinical trials for four drugs that have the highest possibility of treating covid-19 patients.
ii) In case of ethical dilemma faced by medical professionals science and medical field is a lack of resources because of sudden surge in seriously ill covid-19 patients. Therefore the two main challenges faced by healthcare and medical teams is the lack of resources because of the increased number in covid-19 affected patients, second one being lack of trained people to handle the critical patient, which is increasing the number of casualties affected by the pandemic. Example China and Italy being the most affected by covid-19, are reported to be facing rationing as they have decreased supply of resources such as ventilators, due to increased hospitalization of covid-19 patients. China which is the epicenter of this Panda make having the highest number of cases with 80800 as of March 2020 also facing the similar issues. In China, people having pneumonia are affected by Covid-19 and requires special attention and admission to ICU and mechanical ventilation. This tools and systems can be handled by only expertly trained healthcare workers, but due to increase in number of patients and the lack of healthcare workers have put a dilemma in the medical science field, where they could not ensure the life of people. According to the Centre for bioethics the University of Minnesota, explained that through ethics and following research ethics it can provide guidelines to perform responsible conduct in biomedical research. On the other hand, research ethics educates and spreads knowledge to scientist in conducting researches, so that in future they can ensure high ethical standard and handling epidemic, pandemic and endemic situations.
QUESTION 2
i) According to the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), the four dimensions of food security is physical availability of food, economic and physical access to food, food utilization and stability of the other three dimensions in a limited span of time. In the year 2008 when there was a sudden increase in food and fuel prices, FAO responded to the process of organizing a high level conference including World Health Organization(WHO), United Nations children’s fund (UNICEF) and World Food Programme (WFP). According to Lowitt, Kristen, et al, the Caribbean region has a population of 43.5 million, extending the region from Bahamas to Guyana in North and Suriname in South American continent also including Beliz in Central America. According to the four dimension proclaimed by FAO, Caribbean islands is suffering from serious unavailability accessibility and stability of food. The status of Food and Nutrition security in the Caribbean region, are challenged by various factors like natural disasters, exploitation of natural resources, scarcity in food production and prices, decreased trade, lack of technologies, climatic changes, increase in diseases due to lack of sanitation. The Caribbean food channel also is experiencing increase in food import bill which was US$ 2.08 billion in the year 2000, which increased to US$ 4.25 billion in the year 2011.
ii) Food production in Jamaica always been to the process of agriculture and farming, there are thousands of small scale farmers who cultivate food and crops on marginal land in a hilly interior river valleys area. Most of the foods agriculture in Caribbean and Jamaican islands are sold processed resold and then consumed locally which provides a source of people’s nutrition’s, income and livelihoods. The problem in the agricultural field is the lack of technology to combat climatic changes, floods and famines are common in Caribbean, which hampers all the agricultural crops leading to economic instability, food poverty and increased malnutrition people. The government can involve new technological implementations to eradicate the traditional methods and combat the natural disasters with planned procedures.
The Government should implement programs to train agricultural farmers as well as initiate decision making in effective formulation of food security policies as well as strategies and actions, which will help in ensuring peoples food security status. Therefore, the three main challenges that have endangered secured food to Caribbean Nation, is the lack of technologies implemented by Government, less trained agricultural farmers unable to grow crops due to lack of strategies and lack of food security policies that has create more poverty, exposure to malnutrition and poverty. In the recent five decades, there has been growth in various sectors that boost up the economic constraints, like tourism and services and many other diverse economic sectors and businesses, which brought declination in the agricultural constraints. The declination in the agricultural constraints affected the rural areas where the primary source of income is still agriculture; the situation has been magnified by the increase of Food Import Bills by US$4 billion. The Government officials should reduce the Food Import bill, so that the agricultural occupation can be boosted in rural areas.
