SuperNova1987A
Moderator
A piece of sidetrack information on H5N1 in Egypt, which I hesitated to put in the serious thread.
Avian Flu Cases in Egypt Raise Alarms by New York Times
(quote)
Dr. Nikki Shindo, a W.H.O. medical officer who works in Egypt, said the surge in toddler cases and survivals had a possible explanation. The government has loudly warned its citizens to avoid sick poultry and has trained doctors in remote clinics to give Tamiflu quickly and move cases to state hospitals, where treatment is free. In a country where chickens are both kept as pets and eaten, toddlers still touch dying birds but poultry workers would not.
(unquote)
Dr. Nahoko ?Nikki? Shindo is an Avian Influenza spokesperson of WHO and she is often featured by magazines as outstanding Japanese lady working internationally. (See Article 1)
Also, she is widely believed to be the model of Eiko Kobayashi, medical officer of WHO and a main character in the Japanese pandemic movie ?Kansen Retto (Pandemic Archipelago).? (See Article 2)
Although it is not officially recognized that Dr. Shindo is the model of Eiko, many believe so because Dr. Shindo?s story with her late brother (underlined in Artilcle 1) is the same as Eiko Kobayashi?s story in the movie.
In her fight against the misterious new disease called ?Blame?, Eiko proposes to try an unauthorized treatment, convalescent blood transfusion, as a last measure and the treatment eventually saves many people?s lives but not Eiko's.
[[ARTICLE 1]]
PEOPLE: WHO Official Fights To Stem Bird Flu Pandemic Saturday, February 7, 2009
Source: http://www.nni.nikkei.co.jp/FR/TNKS/...07D06JF277.htm
GENEVA (Nikkei)--A pandemic of avian influenza, or bird flu, is feared to one day infect billions of people around the globe. Dr. Nahoko Shindo, a medical officer at the World Health Organization, is among those who would be the first to know about such a devastating outbreak. Her job is to go to the site of an outbreak to examine patients, collect information and report it back to the WHO headquarters in Geneva. She also helps build local quarantine systems to prevent the spread of infection.
Since 2002, Shindo has been at the front lines of the fight against the viruses that cause serious illnesses like Ebola hemorrhagic fever, which spread in Africa; severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS), which broke out suddenly in Asia; and avian influenza, which is being closely monitored by health officials around the world. The 45-year-old Shindo is an infection specialist, highly praised by WHO Director-General Margaret Chan.
Nahoko Shindo
Even with a protective suit, goggles and a high-performance face mask, there is no guarantee with today's medical technologies that Shindo and others working closely with highly contagious diseases will not be infected themselves. When there is an outbreak of an infectious disease in a region of conflict, Shindo travels there on a United Nations helicopter. Each time, she is literally putting her life at risk.
A single mother, Shindo naturally thinks about her 14-year-old son and 11-year-old daughter. However, she says she likes "the tension of devoting my entire self in an instant."
Shindo is driven by a sense of duty, remembering what her brother, four years her junior who had malignant brain tumor, told her one day in his hospital room: "I'm going to die soon, so I want you to become a medical doctor to tell others who are suffering from diseases like me that they have a tomorrow."
Shindo and her brother
Her brother's condition suddenly worsened, and this turned out to be their last conversation.
Shindo, who was a junior in high school that time, had no plans for a medical career and chose engineering as her major in college. But she could not forget her brother's request, and she reapplied for medical school. After working at a university hospital as a physician and at the National Institute of Infectious Diseases, she passed the highly competitive application system for the WHO where, that time, only one in 617 was accepted and became a full-time employee at the organization.
Since the start of 2009, cases of bird flu infections have increased in China, in addition to Indonesia and Vietnam. "There's not enough information about infection routes from the areas affected by the disease," Shindo noted. Her battle against deadly diseases is clearly far from over.
--Translated from an article written by Nikkei staff writer Tsuyoshi Fujita
(The Nikkei Tuesday evening edition)
[[ARTICLE 2]]
Another epidemic of disaster movies starts here By MARK SCHILLING Friday, Jan. 23, 2009
Source: http://search.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/ff20090123a3.html
Disaster movies became big in both Hollywood and Japan in the 1970s ? an era of soaring gas prices, volatile exchange rates and a failed Republican presidency. Now, with history repeating itself (in spades), this much-derided genre is booming again.
Kansen Retto Rating: (3 out of 5)
Doing a runner: Satoshi Tsumabuki in "Kansen Retto"
Director: Takehisa Zeze
Running time: 130 minutes
Language: Japanese
Now showing (Jan. 23, 2009)
Two of Japan's biggest disasters of the 20th century ? World War II and the atomic bombings that ended it ? have been reflected, not only realistically in war movies, but also symbolically in the Godzilla series ? Japan's original diaster movies ? whose title monster has been a stand-in for everything from fire bombings (that breath!) and earthquakes (that stomp!) to atomic blasts.
Even disaster films that seemingly have nothing to do with those long-ago events often echo them. In 2006's "Nihon Chinbotsu" ("Japan Sinks") ? a remake of a 1973 film about the sinking of the Japanese archipelago due to a massive shift in tectonic plates. A submarine pilot who dives to his death in a desperate attempt to reverse the shift in a sub called the Wadatsumi (Ocean) ? a reference to a famous collection of letters by college students who fought and died in the war.
"Kansen Retto" ("Pandemic Archipelago") continues this tradition, albeit in a distinctly contemporary guise.
Directed by Takehisa Zeze, the film takes scare headlines about deadly new infectious diseases from SARS to bird flu to their logical, terrifying conclusion ? an epidemic that kills millions and brings the country to a shuddering halt.
The characters struggle against onrushing doom, while the audience guesses which ones will survive to the final reel. This may strike you as a downer way to spend two hours, especially if you've recently been the recipient of the bad economic news that's about as common as cold germs these days.
On the other hand, perhaps the film's skin-crawlingly staged apocalypse ? and the central characters' gutsy attempts to stop it ? will give you a needed reality check (the current badness could be worse), as well as a booster shot against despair (if they can pull through, why not me?).
Among the gutsiest is Matsuoka (Satoshi Tsumabuki), a young doctor who works in the emergency room of a provincial hospital. He and his colleagues, including his gruff-but-good-hearted sempai (senior) Ando (Koichi Sato) are soon confronted with flu cases that don't respond to the usual treatment, with patients dying horrific, blood-spewing deaths. Soon the hospital waiting room is full of ill and terrified people, while the doctors and nurses labor heroically, if futilely, on.
A medical officer from the WHO, the pretty, steely Eiko Kobayashi (Rei Dan), comes to investigate and promptly encounters skepticism and outright sexism from the hospital powers-that-be. She also stirs memories and more in Matsuoka, since they were once lovers, who parted acrimoniously when Eiko went abroad to study.
They put their personal issues aside, however, to confront the immediate crisis and somehow find a cure. In this search, they seek help from unusual sources, including a fat, asocial researcher (Kanningu Takeyama) who seems to know more than his baffled seniors, and an elderly bird-flu expert (Taktsuya Fuji) who accompanies Matsuoka on a journey to a southern island where the pandemic may have started.
Zeze, who got his start in pinku eiga (soft-porn featurettes) and later made quirky/erotic/violent indie films that gained notice abroad, has scripted and directed this story with a solid professionalism if few distinctive touches and a few generically typical ones. As is usual in these films, including the Godzilla pics, foreigners prove to be unreliable allies and the Japanese must finally go it alone. In fact, outlanders blame Japan for the virus ? which they even call "Blame" (a nice xenophobic touch).
Naturally, the hospital's doctors and nurses are self-sacrificing to a fault, raising their hands to volunteer for hazardous ward duty en masse ? in a scene reminiscent of films about kamikaze suicide pilots. There is even that stock character from wartime propaganda films, a saintly Japanese doctor (Kyusaku Shimada) who wins the trust and loyalty of the natives of the poverty-ridden island.
This is not to say that "Kansen Retto" is nationalist propaganda itself; mostly it is a standard medical thriller. But it does have the virus of the local disaster/monster/war film conventions in its cinematic bloodstream, even though its enemy is measured in microns.
[[Trivia]]
Kansen Retto was distributed to South Korea after Japan.
Without authorization from Japan, Korean distributing agency cut the movie?s ending for about 20 min. where Japanese manage to put the ?Blame? under controll and starts rebuilding their devastated country.
The new ending showed only devastated Japan and overwhelmed Japanese people. Korean movie posters outcried ?Witness Japan in ruins!?
I guess they wanted to see the original ending in a longer episode II "Witness Japan in full form!" No?
＿＿＿＿＿＿＿＿＿＿＿＿＿＿＿＿＿＿＿＿＿＿
SN1987A
Avian Flu Cases in Egypt Raise Alarms by New York Times
(quote)
Dr. Nikki Shindo, a W.H.O. medical officer who works in Egypt, said the surge in toddler cases and survivals had a possible explanation. The government has loudly warned its citizens to avoid sick poultry and has trained doctors in remote clinics to give Tamiflu quickly and move cases to state hospitals, where treatment is free. In a country where chickens are both kept as pets and eaten, toddlers still touch dying birds but poultry workers would not.
(unquote)
Dr. Nahoko ?Nikki? Shindo is an Avian Influenza spokesperson of WHO and she is often featured by magazines as outstanding Japanese lady working internationally. (See Article 1)
Also, she is widely believed to be the model of Eiko Kobayashi, medical officer of WHO and a main character in the Japanese pandemic movie ?Kansen Retto (Pandemic Archipelago).? (See Article 2)
Although it is not officially recognized that Dr. Shindo is the model of Eiko, many believe so because Dr. Shindo?s story with her late brother (underlined in Artilcle 1) is the same as Eiko Kobayashi?s story in the movie.
In her fight against the misterious new disease called ?Blame?, Eiko proposes to try an unauthorized treatment, convalescent blood transfusion, as a last measure and the treatment eventually saves many people?s lives but not Eiko's.
[[ARTICLE 1]]
PEOPLE: WHO Official Fights To Stem Bird Flu Pandemic Saturday, February 7, 2009
Source: http://www.nni.nikkei.co.jp/FR/TNKS/...07D06JF277.htm
GENEVA (Nikkei)--A pandemic of avian influenza, or bird flu, is feared to one day infect billions of people around the globe. Dr. Nahoko Shindo, a medical officer at the World Health Organization, is among those who would be the first to know about such a devastating outbreak. Her job is to go to the site of an outbreak to examine patients, collect information and report it back to the WHO headquarters in Geneva. She also helps build local quarantine systems to prevent the spread of infection.
Since 2002, Shindo has been at the front lines of the fight against the viruses that cause serious illnesses like Ebola hemorrhagic fever, which spread in Africa; severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS), which broke out suddenly in Asia; and avian influenza, which is being closely monitored by health officials around the world. The 45-year-old Shindo is an infection specialist, highly praised by WHO Director-General Margaret Chan.
Nahoko Shindo
Even with a protective suit, goggles and a high-performance face mask, there is no guarantee with today's medical technologies that Shindo and others working closely with highly contagious diseases will not be infected themselves. When there is an outbreak of an infectious disease in a region of conflict, Shindo travels there on a United Nations helicopter. Each time, she is literally putting her life at risk.
A single mother, Shindo naturally thinks about her 14-year-old son and 11-year-old daughter. However, she says she likes "the tension of devoting my entire self in an instant."
Shindo is driven by a sense of duty, remembering what her brother, four years her junior who had malignant brain tumor, told her one day in his hospital room: "I'm going to die soon, so I want you to become a medical doctor to tell others who are suffering from diseases like me that they have a tomorrow."
Shindo and her brother
Her brother's condition suddenly worsened, and this turned out to be their last conversation.
Shindo, who was a junior in high school that time, had no plans for a medical career and chose engineering as her major in college. But she could not forget her brother's request, and she reapplied for medical school. After working at a university hospital as a physician and at the National Institute of Infectious Diseases, she passed the highly competitive application system for the WHO where, that time, only one in 617 was accepted and became a full-time employee at the organization.
Since the start of 2009, cases of bird flu infections have increased in China, in addition to Indonesia and Vietnam. "There's not enough information about infection routes from the areas affected by the disease," Shindo noted. Her battle against deadly diseases is clearly far from over.
--Translated from an article written by Nikkei staff writer Tsuyoshi Fujita
(The Nikkei Tuesday evening edition)
[[ARTICLE 2]]
Another epidemic of disaster movies starts here By MARK SCHILLING Friday, Jan. 23, 2009
Source: http://search.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/ff20090123a3.html
Disaster movies became big in both Hollywood and Japan in the 1970s ? an era of soaring gas prices, volatile exchange rates and a failed Republican presidency. Now, with history repeating itself (in spades), this much-derided genre is booming again.
Kansen Retto Rating: (3 out of 5)
Doing a runner: Satoshi Tsumabuki in "Kansen Retto"
Director: Takehisa Zeze
Running time: 130 minutes
Language: Japanese
Now showing (Jan. 23, 2009)
Two of Japan's biggest disasters of the 20th century ? World War II and the atomic bombings that ended it ? have been reflected, not only realistically in war movies, but also symbolically in the Godzilla series ? Japan's original diaster movies ? whose title monster has been a stand-in for everything from fire bombings (that breath!) and earthquakes (that stomp!) to atomic blasts.
Even disaster films that seemingly have nothing to do with those long-ago events often echo them. In 2006's "Nihon Chinbotsu" ("Japan Sinks") ? a remake of a 1973 film about the sinking of the Japanese archipelago due to a massive shift in tectonic plates. A submarine pilot who dives to his death in a desperate attempt to reverse the shift in a sub called the Wadatsumi (Ocean) ? a reference to a famous collection of letters by college students who fought and died in the war.
"Kansen Retto" ("Pandemic Archipelago") continues this tradition, albeit in a distinctly contemporary guise.
Directed by Takehisa Zeze, the film takes scare headlines about deadly new infectious diseases from SARS to bird flu to their logical, terrifying conclusion ? an epidemic that kills millions and brings the country to a shuddering halt.
The characters struggle against onrushing doom, while the audience guesses which ones will survive to the final reel. This may strike you as a downer way to spend two hours, especially if you've recently been the recipient of the bad economic news that's about as common as cold germs these days.
On the other hand, perhaps the film's skin-crawlingly staged apocalypse ? and the central characters' gutsy attempts to stop it ? will give you a needed reality check (the current badness could be worse), as well as a booster shot against despair (if they can pull through, why not me?).
Among the gutsiest is Matsuoka (Satoshi Tsumabuki), a young doctor who works in the emergency room of a provincial hospital. He and his colleagues, including his gruff-but-good-hearted sempai (senior) Ando (Koichi Sato) are soon confronted with flu cases that don't respond to the usual treatment, with patients dying horrific, blood-spewing deaths. Soon the hospital waiting room is full of ill and terrified people, while the doctors and nurses labor heroically, if futilely, on.
A medical officer from the WHO, the pretty, steely Eiko Kobayashi (Rei Dan), comes to investigate and promptly encounters skepticism and outright sexism from the hospital powers-that-be. She also stirs memories and more in Matsuoka, since they were once lovers, who parted acrimoniously when Eiko went abroad to study.
They put their personal issues aside, however, to confront the immediate crisis and somehow find a cure. In this search, they seek help from unusual sources, including a fat, asocial researcher (Kanningu Takeyama) who seems to know more than his baffled seniors, and an elderly bird-flu expert (Taktsuya Fuji) who accompanies Matsuoka on a journey to a southern island where the pandemic may have started.
Zeze, who got his start in pinku eiga (soft-porn featurettes) and later made quirky/erotic/violent indie films that gained notice abroad, has scripted and directed this story with a solid professionalism if few distinctive touches and a few generically typical ones. As is usual in these films, including the Godzilla pics, foreigners prove to be unreliable allies and the Japanese must finally go it alone. In fact, outlanders blame Japan for the virus ? which they even call "Blame" (a nice xenophobic touch).
Naturally, the hospital's doctors and nurses are self-sacrificing to a fault, raising their hands to volunteer for hazardous ward duty en masse ? in a scene reminiscent of films about kamikaze suicide pilots. There is even that stock character from wartime propaganda films, a saintly Japanese doctor (Kyusaku Shimada) who wins the trust and loyalty of the natives of the poverty-ridden island.
This is not to say that "Kansen Retto" is nationalist propaganda itself; mostly it is a standard medical thriller. But it does have the virus of the local disaster/monster/war film conventions in its cinematic bloodstream, even though its enemy is measured in microns.
[[Trivia]]
Kansen Retto was distributed to South Korea after Japan.
Without authorization from Japan, Korean distributing agency cut the movie?s ending for about 20 min. where Japanese manage to put the ?Blame? under controll and starts rebuilding their devastated country.
The new ending showed only devastated Japan and overwhelmed Japanese people. Korean movie posters outcried ?Witness Japan in ruins!?
I guess they wanted to see the original ending in a longer episode II "Witness Japan in full form!" No?
＿＿＿＿＿＿＿＿＿＿＿＿＿＿＿＿＿＿＿＿＿＿
SN1987A