Public Health

Israel did its best to keep me out of the Gaza Strip. Not just me—all international media. For two weeks, we watched from the Egyptian side of Gaza's southern border as plumes of smoke erupted from around Rafah, and the wounded trickled out, one by one, in battered Palestinian ambulances on their way to intensive care units in Cairo. Finally, in the last week of Operation Cast Lead, something gave, and the Egyptian government unexpectedly opened the gates.

Friday morning I headed out early with a team of health professionals to observe a community clinic. Many places are so rural in this part of Honduras that people rely on Shoulder to Shoulder health workers to travel to them every three months or so and set up makeshift clinics in schools and churches.

Gay pride is celebrated across the U.S. every June. Could there be similar celebrations of gay pride in Jamaica?

Santa Lucia is hidden deep in the mountain range of southwestern Honduras. I traveled for eight hours by car from the San Pedro Sula airport to Santa Lucia, a tiny community in the remote region of Intibuca. The gravel road hugged the mountainous terrain as we weaved up, around, and down. Pot holes and washed-out areas from torrential rains created a nearly impassable road. The recent 7.2 earthquake that struck Honduras crumbled many of the bridges, leaving only holes in its wake.

See Tracy's other dispatches

"Hope's Hospice," a collection of poetry by Kwame Dawes inspired by his Pulitzer Center-sponsored reporting in Jamaica, was called "sublime" in a review by The Jamaica Gleaner. The poetry, which largely handles the impact of AIDs on Jamaican society, is accompanied by photographs by Joshua Cogan. According to The Gleaner, the collection "will jolt you from your slumber and spur you to think, to act" about AIDs "without being preachy."

Cuba has the highest rate of depression and suicide in the New World. So why does Castro's vaunted health care system deny the very existence of mental illness on the island?

NORTH MITROVICA, Kosovo | No one seems to care about the gypsies.

Displaced by conflict and stranded by bureaucratic inertia, dozens of gypsy families remain on toxic land 10 years after they were relocated there by the United Nations after the Kosovo war.

Lead blackens the children's teeth, blanks out memories and stunts growth. Other symptoms of lead poisoning include aggressive behavior, nervousness, dizziness, vomiting and high fever. The children swing between bursts of nervous hyperactivity and fainting spells. Some have epileptic fits.

In 1999 following the NATO led bombing in the Kosovo region, the United Nations built resettlement camps for one of the wars overlooked people, the Roma. Two of these camps were built next to a toxic slagheap of 100 million tons of lead runoff. The hurriedly constructed barracks were also built with old painted lead boards. Today, ten years later, the people of Chesmin Lug and Osterrode camps continue to struggle with life and health.

Unless otherwise noted, photos and text credited to: Darren McCollester / Pulitzer Center