EVENT ANNOUNCEMENT

DATE: Book club starts this week and author Twitter chat is noon June 17, 2014

EVENT: The University of Michigan School of Public Health is kicking off a new virtual summer book club called SPHReads, with “The Big Necessity: The Unmentionable World of Human Waste and Why It Matters” by Rose George. A live Twitter chat with the author is planned. SPHReads is open to anyone interested in public health issues.

ONLINE DISCUSSIONS: Will take place on the School of Public Health Facebook and Twitter pages at www.facebook.com/UMSPH and @UM_SPH

DETAILS: “The Big Necessity” focuses on the public health issue of sanitation and communicable diseases. An excerpt from the book:

“In the early 21st century, when surgery can be done microscopically and human achievement seems limitless, 2.6 billion people lack the most basic thing that human dignity requires. Four in 10 people in the world have no toilet. They must do their business instead on roadsides, in the bushes, wherever they can. Yet human feces in water supplies contribute to one in 10 of the world’s communicable diseases. A child dies from diarrhea—usually brought on by fecal-contaminated food or water—every 15 seconds…

“The disease toll of this is stunning. A gram of feces can contain 10 million viruses, 1 million bacteria, 1,000 parasite cysts, and 100 worm eggs…

“Four in 10 people live in situations where they are surrounded by human excrement because it is in the bushes outside the village or in their city yards, left by children outside the backdoor. It is tramped back in on their feet, carried on fingers onto clothes, food and drinking water…

“Every day, you handle the deadliest substance on earth. It is a weapon of mass destruction festering beneath your fingernails. In the past 10 years, it has killed more people than all the wars since Adolf Hitler rolled into one; in the next four hours, it will kill the equivalent of two jumbo jets full of kids.”

INFORMATION: All participants must obtain their own copy of the book. Register for SPHReads at http://sph.umich.edu/sphreads