10
SOCIETY
GEORGIA TODAY
DECEMBER 4 - 10, 2020
Pixel Shifting in Ushguli If you take four hand-held photos of a still scene moving as little as possible (not on a tripod), the movement (shift) between them is crucial. In the computer, stack the set as layers; enlarge them 200% each, length and width (= 4 times the area). Align them, then set the program to give less and less opacity to each layer compared to the one below it: 100%, 50, 33, 25. Flatten the layers, sharpen, and you’ve used the set to make an image 4 times larger than what your camera can do with a single shot, and just as sharp as that one frame would be. If you have the space and money, print that thing huge and enjoy. My laptop’s 16 GB of RAM are just enough to do this, if only my photo editing program is running and nothing else. So far I’m pleased with the results, and as memory storage is only decreasing in price while it grows in size, space is not a serious issue. There are some things which we could do in the darkroom and now emulate by computer; but this is something else. It’s not needed for every photo, but for the best ones, it can really show them off at breathtaking scale. My new favorite trick.
BLOG BY TONY HANMER
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othing like a trip back to Ushguli, my winter home from 2007-9, to cheer me up. I went with some friends and their American guest, carefully masked, for a night. They had business there with friends of theirs, looking for a secondhand 4x4 vehicle. I had business with the landscape, as usual, my former hosts being away at the moment. We had to wait over two hours between K’ala, the last village before our destination, and Ushguli, while some more rockfalls were cleared. This time, two caterpillars were involved, one at each end of the blockage, and two climbers were roped up above them, knocking down more of the rotten rock which road-widen explosions had exposed. They had said three hours, so we got off early. It was quite something to see those scoops moving small-car-sized chunks of slate to the road’s edge and down towards the Enguri river far below. If they slid instead of rolling, some of them slowed down on the slope and didn’t make the river. The rollers, though, practically bounced, and if they didn’t shatter into their component fragile layers, hit the water with almighty splashes. Once the fallen wall of rock was stable enough not to pour down onto and over us, and a brand new road section had been flattened out sufficiently for our Delica, we were given the go-ahead and
drove through the mess and into freedom. Twilight was already coming down as we got into Ushguli, and there would be more exploding and road closure tomorrow, they told us; don’t overstay! Warm welcome near the top of the village, shown our rooms, plenty of hot food in a very cozily warm room where the
big Svan stove was doing its duty. Three generations aged about 10 to 90 share the house. My room wasn’t able to have a heater, but I said I’d be fine with enough covers, and that was indeed the case. What’s +2 degrees C (said my thermometer) when I’d spent part of two winters earlier in a room down to -4? I slept like
a hibernating bear, then and now! The golden dawn light showed most of Mt. Shkhara above the village, Georgia’s highest peak above Europe’s highest village, right from my own window. Time to experiment with a new technique in what is called computational photography: Pixel Shifting.
Tony Hanmer has lived in Georgia since 1999, in Svaneti since 2007, and been a weekly writer and photographer for GT since early 2011. He runs the “Svaneti Renaissance” Facebook group, now with nearly 2000 members, at www.facebook.com/ groups/SvanetiRenaissance/ He and his wife also run their own guest house in Etseri: www.facebook.com/hanmer.house.svaneti
Fighting the Stigma of Cancer: Regional Center Aims to Improve Historically Low Rates of Detection
Ioseb Abesadze, the Director Tbilisi's Cancer Prevention Center. (Photo: Vazha Tavberidze)
BY VAZHA TAVBERIDZE
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hen 46-year old Darejan Berishvili made a routine visit to the newly-opened cancer screening center in her home town of Zugdidi, she expected to receive a clean bill of health. However, despite having experienced no discomfort, testing revealed she had a stage two malignant tumor in her breast. “The fact that it was discovered at still a relatively early stage is what I suppose I owe my life and current health to,” Berishvili said. After diagnosis, she had successful surgery in Kutaisi. Medical professionals in the Georgian region of Samegrelo-Upper Svaneti, which has historically reported high rates of cancer, say that local efforts to raise awareness of the importance of routine screening are paying off. In general, cancer screening in Georgia remains low. For example, according to 2019 data, only 18% of Georgian women had undergone breast cancer screening, compared with 40% in Greece and 80% in Finland.
“The sizeable discrepancy of the cancer mortality rates between developed and developing countries are largely down to successful early stage detection,” said Ioseb Abesadze, Director of Tbilisi’s Cancer Prevention Center. “And in that, screening plays a pivotal role. “The developed countries of the world made every effort to make screening a popular practice, to turn it into a routine healthcare procedure, while in countries such as Georgia, we still have to convince large parts of the population of the benefits of screening.” He said that only between 12-15% of people access cancer screening services in Georgia, whereas around 40-60% of the target population needed to be screened to effectively reduce mortality. A lack of information, fear, and the stigma around cancer mean that many people are reluctant to even take part in screening programs. Practitioners say that a more open discussion between healthcare providers and patients is needed to change these attitudes. “A systemic change of the perception of the problem is needed to successfully overcome this obstacle,” Abesadze said. “Communication with the target audience should be bolstered so that the
correct culture of taking care of one’s health is finally introduced at the grassroots level and not looked at as something only available to those who can afford it. You should take care of your health while you are healthy because it might prove too little too late if you only start doing it once your health falters.” Detection rates have improved since a national cancer screening program was launched in Georgia in 2008. In the early days of the program, most identified cases were already at Stage IV and largely untreatable. By 2016, cases caught at Stage I and II had significantly increased. But awareness raising is particularly important for rural populations who have less access to medical care. The Zugdidi Screening Center, opened in October 2019 with financial support from the Czech Development Cooperation and Caritas Czech Republic in Georgia (CCRG), aims to improve early testing for a range of common cancers for the nearly half-a-million people living in Samegrelo-Upper Svaneti. The region has reported relatively high rates of cancer in recent decades. Some experts attribute this to the consequences of the Chernobyl disaster 34 years ago; this western part of Georgia was believed to have been badly affected by the subsequent radioactive cloud. There is also a large proportion of internally displaced people (IDPs) from previous rounds of conflict in Georgia. “The Samegrelo region and particularly the city of Zugdidi are the most densely IDP populated areas in Georgia,” said Rema Ghvamichava, director of the Zugdidi screening center. “That’s why around 35-40% of those depending on the Zugdidi Screening Center are IDPs. Among this, around 10% are from Abkhazia.” Tamuna Kurtanidze, project manager at CCRG, agreed that the center had been a game-changer for IDPs, refugees and residents of Abkhazia who had since gained access to facilities that were otherwise seriously lacking. “Our story of establishing the screening center started almost a decade ago
with an education campaign on the importance of cancer prevention and fighting cancer stigma. We continue this approach by reminding citizens to do regular check-ups even if they don’t have any symptoms. This education campaign is even more important in remote rural areas where accessibility to information is less available. To change this, we go door–to–door and from person-to person, sending the message that between 30-50% of all cancer cases are preventable if we lead a healthy lifestyle and do regular medical check-ups,” Kurtanidze said.
The center has so far provided services to more than 1,600 individuals from the Samegrelo-Upper Svaneti region. Numbers are growing, though there is still a large difference between men and women when it comes to screening. Staff note that men are more likely to attend the center after someone in their village is diagnosed and treated for cancer.
