Pulitzer Center Update

This Week: Contagion That Travels by Plane

November 28, 2017 | Newsletter
Ticket agents work with travelers in the Southwest ticketing area at Mitchell International Airport in 2015. Passengers, unwilling to postpone plans, sometimes travel while sick. Passengers can also harbor a virus without showing symptoms, meaning that they aren't even aware that they could be passing a disease to fellow passengers. Image by Mike de Sisti/Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. United States, 2015.

Ticket agents work with travelers in the Southwest ticketing area at Mitchell International Airport in 2015. Passengers, unwilling to postpone plans, sometimes travel while sick. Passengers can also harbor a virus without showing symptoms, meaning that they aren't even aware that they could be passing a disease to fellow passengers. Image by Mike de Sisti/Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. United States, 2015.

Contagion That Travels by Plane
Mark Johnson and McKenna Oxenden

A series of disease outbreaks over the past 15 years—SARS, swine flu, and Ebola, among others—has demonstrated the link between air travel and communicable diseases. Yet the United States still lacks a national plan to prevent and contain the spread of disease by air travel, report Mark Johnson and McKenna Oxenden for the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. Among complaints made by airline workers: crews responsible for cleaning up after sick passengers are poorly trained. One said “cabin cleaners sometimes use the same towels to clean potentially infectious materials and later to clean food service equipment such as coffeemakers.”

Sámi reindeer herder Reiulf Aleksandersen and his son build a fence for gathering their herd on Ruksesvárri, or Red Mountain, in northern Norway. Image by Amy Martin. Norway, 2017.

Sámi reindeer herder Reiulf Aleksandersen and his son build a fence for gathering their herd on Ruksesvárri, or Red Mountain, in northern Norway. Image by Amy Martin. Norway, 2017.

Reindeer vs. Wind Turbines
Amy Martin

For PRI’s The World, reporter and podcaster Amy Martin visits the coast of Norway to learn about the Sámi, an indigenous people suffering from climate change, as well as from the efforts to combat it.

 

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