Abdul Bhuiya’s Updates

Week 2 Journal

This was a different type of lecture and assignment than the previous one. While I thought the content and assignment was basic, I think this technique of analyzing data would become important later on in the course and in future work. I learnt about important statistics that I have not known before, such as the fact that there is one doctor for every 30,000 people in Sierra Leone and Liberia, or that all schools were closed during Ebola outbreak in Sierra Leone, which lead to a gap in education amongst children. The WHO document about USA and Sierra Leone seemed very useful to me in terms of having a general overview of the health status of the two countries. I also found some of the explanations or descriptions of the conditions in Sierra Leone similar to that of my home country, Bangladesh, such as when some people of Sierra Leone refused to go to the clinic in fear of contracting the disease in the clinic, which is a common misconception in our country too especially among people in rural areas. I am excited to learn about technological interventions in the coming weeks, since that is something I am very passionate about and am currently researching on.