Research at Cambridge: what the Fellows do with their time
FRIDAY JANUARY 29TH 2010
All-Canadian cuisine inspired by the Barenaked Ladies
THE INDEPENDENT STUDENT NEWSPAPER SINCE 1947
Cambridge in post-quake Haiti
ISSUE NO 711 | VARSITY.CO.UK MICHAEL DERRINGER
CATHY BUEKER
Psychiatrist and charity aid relief effort GEMMA OKE
A Cambridge academic and a locallybased children’s charity have been drawn into the international relief effort for the victims of the Haiti earthquake. Clinical psychiatrist Dr Lynne Jones, a senior mental health advisor for the International Medical Corps (IMC), flew to Haiti on Monday to co-ordinate psychological counselling for the earthquake’s survivors. Dr Jones is an honorary research associate at the University of Cambridge, and has previously undertaken psychological relief work in Pakistan and Kosovo. Before flying to the quake-ravaged country, Dr Jones warned of the grave consequences for the nation’s future wellbeing if the physical destruction caused by the disaster was not dealt with in a psychologically sensitive way. Dr Jones said, “Burning large numbers of bodies in mass graves is not good for long-term mental health. Mental health considerations need to be integrated into the other relief work that takes place. It’s not just about counselling.” The IMC is a California-based non-political charity with volunteer doctors and nurses posted globally, which focuses on healthcare training, relief and development programs. It was one of the fi rst international relief organisations to send medics to Haiti, and has set up a clinic in the Haitian capital
Port-au-Prince. The clinic has been treating hundreds of people, with priority given to those with physical injuries, despite suffering logistical problems in getting workers into Haiti. IMC teams are expected to offer ‘psychological fi rst aid’ to Haitians, which includes empathetic listening, paying attention to a person’s particular needs and providing information. Dr Jones commented that in the long term, the presence of mental healthcare workers in Haiti may improve community services across the board, thus helping the reconstruction effort when it comes. Priority for mental healthcare services in Haiti is expected to be given to those with pre-existing mental health problems, whose medical treatment has been interrupted by the collapse in physical and social infrastructure. Those with disorders brought on by acute stress will also be given priority in treatment. Elsewhere, Cambridge based children’s charity SOS Children’s Villages has joined the international effort to rehome children orphaned by the earthquake. The organisation, which supports some 70,000 orphaned children in 124 countries, is working to reunite children with surviving family members, and to support orphaned children “through to independence”. The charity’s chief executive in Cambridge, Andrew Cates, CONTINUED ON PAGE 3
Cambridge will recover easily from recession
Classics revisited
A
fter 18 months of work and £950,000 of investment, The Fitzwilliam Museum’s new exhibition, ‘Rediscovering Greece and Rome’, will open this Saturday. The opening marks the fi rst radical overhaul of the Greek and Roman Gallery since the 1960s. The gallery’s renovation unearthed an unexpected fi nd: a ‘time capsule’ placed within one of the gallery’s false walls by the staff during the last renovation, and containing, amongst other things, a 1963 issue of Cambridge News. The renovated gallery boasts 450 noteworthy objects, including treasures from the palace of Emperor Hadrian at Tivoli and an example of graffiti more than 2,500 years old. AVANTIKA CHILKOTI
According to a new report by the think-tank Centre for Cities, Cambridge is well-poised to recover from the recession, owing in part to its highly educated workforce. Although the UK’s economy is officially out of recession, growing by 0.1 per cent in the fourth quarter of 2009, recovery among many British cities will be slow and uneven. The cities that are likely to rebound more quickly are those that have a strong business base and a well-educated workforce, such as Brighton and Cambridge. The Centre’s study drew its data from an evaluation of 64 cities over the last two years. It concluded that areas that were already struggling before the recession were much less likely to make a strong improvement after it. Cities, such as Doncaster and Newport, that had fewer start-up businesses and less-educated workforces prior to the recession, are expected to have even greater difficulty with recovery. They are also more likely to be crippled by cuts in public spending, says the thinktank. Having a highly educated workforce has meant that cities like Cambridge have generally escaped huge levels of unemployment. Cambridge had the lowest percentage of people on job seeker’s allowance, while Hull had the highest – a gap which almost doubled during the recession.
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