Description of Cluster Topics
The general theme of the 10th Science Council of Asia meeting is: Meeting the Health Challenges in the Asia Pacific Region: Responding through an Integrated Approach in Science and Technology. By and large, topics, papers, and discussions are expected to delve lengthily into this theme. The discussions are drawn from four different Clusters compartmentalizing four subthemes. For Cluster I, the subtheme is Culture and Health, Cluster II Climate Change and Health, Cluster III Technology and Health, and Cluster IV Environment and Health. Note that each subtheme is necessarily connected to or intertwined with the concept of health. Hence, it is important that any talk, paper, or discussion during the SCA meet should focus mainly on these specific subthemes.
Each subtheme then, is contextualized briefly as follows:
Culture and Health. This subtheme is expected to encapsulate certain prevailing cultural practices among peoples in Asia Pacific in terms of their direct implications or relevance to health. One example in the Philippine context is the still persisting culture in remote Philippine villages where the umbilical cord of a newborn is cut off mainly with the use of sharpened edge of a bamboo stick signifying a conscious intent of parents to have the newborn identify itself with nature early on in its life. Obviously, this practice has anthropological underpinnings. Another, in some cases in the Philippines, few people use urine to wash off sore eyes, believing that the liquid can hasten recovery of the eyes. (This may have historical bases, though, since during the World War 2, urine was reportedly used as antioxidants; in some countries, it was reportedly used as gargle or mouthwash.) This may be strange, but scientifically, what is the implication of this practice to human health? A speaker may explore on material cultures or practices that have maladaptive effect to health. A speaker, however, is free to blend her/his talk and enrich this subtheme in varying contexts, cultural paradigms and contextual appropriations with reference to certain cultural traits or material culture existing in and practiced by peoples in Asia.
Climate Change and Health. This subtheme is expected to trail the impacts or bearings of climate change on the health conditions of peoples in Asia. Talks may be contrived in terms of the varying changes in climate in certain geographical and topographical locations with reference to how they affect people’s living, adaptations, lifestyles, and even cultural patterns. For example, speakers may present a talk probing the rise in temperature as causing incidence of tropical diseases e.g. dengue, typhoid, malaria etc. Or, in not so queer instances, does climate change necessarily result in reduction or induction of human populations in predominantly temperate regions? Speakers have the leeway to enrich their talks for as long as they do not drift away from this subtheme.
Technology and Health. This subtheme is expected to explore on the use or discovery of technology—product, service, process, or tool—in terms of their implications and impact to the overall health conditions of peoples in Asia. Speakers have the latitude to broaden their talk for as long as it trails along this subtheme. For example, is vermin culture or vermicompost technology detrimental to a farmer’s health in that it may induce tuberculosis or asthma problems when vermin constituents are inhaled constantly? Or, is it true that regular use of cellphones—or exposures to computer gadgets e.g. internet—especially when often used close to body can diffuse radioactivity that is harmful to human health and thereby cause cancer? Is it true that to protect one’s health, one should use these gadgets in relative distance from the body?
Environment and Health. Talks along this subtheme may look at the correlations between ecological and ecosystemic conditions and peoples’ health, as well as the symbiotic relationship between peoples’ activities, cultural practices and the present and future conditions of the physical environment. Speakers, however, can vary a talk for as long as it revolves around this subtheme. For example, speakers may educate SCA participants on the possible health dangers among human populations exposed to mined out areas where drains of chemicals e.g. lead or methane remain active in soil. Or, a number of reported cancer-related deaths among people who have worked in chemical factories are hypothesized to be caused, directly or indirectly, by chemicals being inordinately inhaled by workers. Are there scientific bases to this claim? Or, in the Philippines’ agricultural communities, riverbanks are converted into virtual washbasins. What bearing does this practice have on the environment, and ultimately on the people’s health where people possibly partake of the bounty (e.g. crustaceans and other organisms of mollusks variety) derived from the river?
