Goodbye, German Germs

Here, I think I’ve learned the most about global health than I have in any other setting. We have covered health from a social, economic, and biological standpoint. I’ve researched some of the common infectious diseases, but that has been the extent of my knowledge until these past two weeks.

I think the most interesting aspect of global health that we looked at was the social implications and consequences of those health issues. In particular, when we looked at the Crash Course video on the history of infectious diseases, I was fascinated by the effects of those epidemics. For example, I had no idea about the economic benefits of the Black Death. Also, we looked at how certain races were affected by various health systems, which ultimately keeps us from achieving the goal of worldwide health. Without both equality and equity, we will not be able to actively achieve any global commonality—and that is consistent throughout all facets of life. Finally, in reading the Bill Gates article, we were able to clearly see how much finance has an impact on global health. Bill Gates, the richest man in the world, has an enormous amount of power in the course of global health due to the foundations that he leads. CIEE has opened my eyes to many aspects of health that I think will be very helpful, even though I am a math major. Thank you for having me, Germany.