Masaryk University Faculty of Law Public Health Law Skype call (Paper) Author: Martin Vladař Subject: Public Health Law Date: 16th April 2009 Skype Assignment This paper should have been a short abstract from a skype discussion that we did with a student from The John Marshall Law School in Chicago. But things went different than we expected them to be so I’m going to make the topic a bit wider. The student who I was supposed to talk with was Amanda B. Morgenstern. We began the conversation about at 11 o’clock of our time and ended it long after midnight, so I was a bit handicapped due to my tiredness. Amanda was a very nice and interesting person and I was glad that I had a chance to talk to her. I also hope that she enjoyed talking to me as well. the chance to talk to person from different continent was for me quite interesting and enriching. At the beginning of our conversation we introduced ourselves to get to know each other more and to make the conversation more comfortable. Amanda told me, that she was born in New York and her parents still live like 30 kilometers from Big Apple. Later she also mentioned that some of her ascendants came from Austria which is a neighbouring country of the Czech Republic. Amanda studied High school at Tulane, near New Orleans. I was surprised when Amanda told me that she had studied in Tulane which is situated in a great distance from her hometown because people in our country have quite a different opinion on what is far and what is not. Now she studies at a university - The John Marshall Law School in Chicago to become a lawyer. She also told me about some differences which I didn’t know – that in the United States you attend a high school till you are 22-year-old and a university takes three years and is quite expensive. She told me that she would like to travel but she concentrated on her school duties. The easiest topic to start our conversation about Public Health law with was life experiences we went through. I began to talk about floods which stroked the Czech Republic twice, for the first time in 1997 and than in 2002. Such flood are said to appear only once in hundred years. Even though our country was not prepared for such big floods we handled it well and learned from mistakes. Now we have brand ? (to brand bych asi nepoužila) new anti-flood systems all across the country and all dangerous rivers were rebuilt to be a hundred-year floods proof. ? (nechápu, co to je…napsala bych to withstand such big floods… třeba) But more interesting for me was to hear Amanda talking about the hurricane Katrina. She mentioned few consequences that effected what happened after. Firstly, she said that the Bush’s government failed with a reaction almost a week after. Secondly, those local authorities also knew that barriers near New Orleans were not in a good condition but they were not willing to donate their rebuilding. Finally, in areas which were stroked live poor people so (so that je aby) they didn’t have cars to escape, money to attend their relatives etc…What was the most surprising for me was the incredible amount of people and the size of the flooded area. Due to a poor government help a lot of people were made to steal food and loot in order to survive. They were accommodated at sports halls and stadiums where local gangs began to rule. As I have mentioned before it had taken a week till needed help arrived. Amanda said that she together with her friends took a car and drove away and her school was closed for over 4 months. We also took advantage of all skype devices (jako co si chtěl říct tím futures, nemělo to být když tak feature?) and sent each other a lot of photos and videos. The last topic seemed a bit weird for me because our conversation had been hold just a few days before first news about swine influenza or pig flu appeared. That’s why we didn’t spend as much time as from today´s point of view we should have spent. Facing today’s cases I realized that I had not taken flu seriously. For me it has been just a common illness through which one goes once a year. First warning came from bird flu, than I began to take it more seriously, but I was convinced that in our country due to a good work of hygienists it could not spread and strick people. My opinion changed after recent experiences with pig flu. Both, me and Amanda, are not vaccinated, we’ve been talking about it but we don’t find it that necessary. But now If I travelled to places where pig or bird flu have appeared I would consider vaccination if it will have benn invented by that time. (ale možná I to travel a will…ale vzhledem k tomu , že ještě ta vakcína není, tak spíš tak, jak sem napsala.) When I entered this subject I didn’t know what it was going to be about. After going through all the lessons I realized, that public health law is quite important part of law, but unfortunately no one appreciates it until something happens. And after the pig flu occured I realized how much all the stuff you were talking about was actual although it did not seem (za does not seemed by tě dostalová roztrhala:D) to be so. For example you have mentioned Mr. Vít – I have heard about him like once before, but since than he has appeared on tv broadcast and in newspapers every day. I have never heard about pandemic plans until going through the subject and now even tabloids are seriously writing about a grade of pandemic plan at which we are now and what is being done. But thanks to public health law and the WHO effort and the doctrine of preparedness things are going good as I would say or at least they could have been much worse. So thank you for the Public health law subject, thank you for enabling me to talk to Amanda, it was a brilliant experience and she is a really nice person. And I suppose you have a lot of work now so I’m holding my fingers crossed that everything goes well and soon we’ll get rid of this pig flu.