What’s really difficult to understand until you spend some time there is that it’s obvious that the occupation’s days are numbered. They’re like, “Oh my God, the occupation has been there for seven million years and it’s going to be there for seven million thousand more years.” I’m guessing you’re in the United States?Īmericans are the most hopeless people on the Israel-Palestine conflict. When I looked around, I realized that what we actually needed wasn’t medical devices. The problem is that, quite literally, the Israelis stop us from receiving equipment, from getting training, from doing anything. The problem in Gaza is not a problem of the place being poor or the people being stupid. The Egyptians were junior partners in the blockade of Gaza by the Israelis, so we in turn were also subject to the whims of the Israelis. All subject to the whims of the Egyptians. I don’t know how familiar you are with the Egyptian tunnels, but there were 1,800 tunnels between Egypt and Gaza at one point. So we started bringing things in through Egypt. When I would train my residents in Gaza, they would say, “Great training, but we don’t have access to any of this stuff.”Īt the time, Egypt was a little bit open. There is a lack of training, but there’s also a lack of access to medical devices. When I went, however, I realized that the problem is actually multi-partite. But I’ve been so indoctrinated with white privilege from living in Canada that when I first started going back my thinking was, “I have this great Canadian education and I’m going to teach them how to be good doctors and then everything will be fine.” They think it’s just about 3D-printing medical devices for Gaza. That can be confusing to some people who aren’t familiar with the project because they look at it and they think it’s about technology. The Glia Project is first and foremost a project about independence. It was picked remarkably quickly and for no good reason.Īhead of this conversation, I was reading about your work and I have some sense of how I might summarize it, but I’m wondering how you frame what you’re doing in the world. We didn’t really care about a name, but we needed one to apply for a medical license and The High-Quality, Low-Cost Open Access Medical Device Project just didn’t seem like the thing to write on that application. One of the engineers was like, “Glia… I like Glia.” Okay, great. It just sounded medical and we all liked it. We sat down with him to talk about his work. Loubani is also distributing the means of producing that hardware - 3D printers - and training Canadian medical students and regular Gazans to print medical equipment themselves. Loubani founded the Glia Project to work on the stethoscope problem and the blockade problem at the same time: in the same way that drug manufacturers copy brand-name drugs and sell them for less as generics, the Glia Project makes generics of medical hardware. Reliable access to more expensive equipment is out of the question. What’s merely irritating in Ontario presents a more serious barrier to care in Gaza, where Loubani has been taking regular trips since 2011 and where the Israeli and Egyptian blockade ensures that he rarely has access to basic medical equipment like gauze and plastic gloves when he’s there. The Palestinian-Canadian doctor is an emergency room physician and professor based in London, Ontario, where he has set up a factory in his basement to print more affordable stethoscopes. Tarek Loubani thinks it’s fucked up that doctors and nurses have to pay $200 for a stethoscope that can be 3D-printed for $3. But more often than you’d like to admit, you’re bored or preoccupied, sneaking glances at your phone, reviewing.Dr. Oh, wait: They were never popular.) It’s been fun to fiddle.īy Carla Naumburg | | Offspring - LifehackerYou want to be more present for your children, to engage with them from a place of intention and connection rather than distraction and knee-jerk reactions. (I owned a Casio calculator watch long before they were popular. How a Smartwatch Can Make Parenting Easierīy Carla Naumburg | | Offspring - LifehackerI didn’t buy a smartwatch because I thought it might make parenting easier-I bought it because it was cute and shiny and I like new toys. This is an insanely hard thing to do as tantrums are specifically designed to trigger you into action (emphasis on the word ‘trigger’). It’s a problem because it increases the.īy Carla Naumburg | | Offspring - Lifehacker“The first, and most important step, is that parents need to stay calm during their toddler’s public tantrums. But when our explosions become habitual, when we’re losing it on a regular basis, then it’s a problem. This doesn’t make us bad parents it’s just part of life with little ones. How to Recover After You’ve Lost It With Your Kidsīy Carla Naumburg | | Offspring - LifehackerWe all lose our shit with our kids sometimes.
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