Social issue

The social issue that I am going to write about is Health System. It’s very important because it affects people’s quality of life, especially to poorest people. The main problem is the inequality between private and public system. The private health system have many better conditions to care for people but it is so expensive that just the richest people can afford it. Private system has better conditions in hospitals, more doctors and specialist and if you can´t afford it you must go to Public system. The Public system is going through a big crisis these days, because, for example, there is a lack of doctors and specialist or even beds for people that need medical attention. Also the conditions in public hospitals are not so good, and when someone needs to take an hour for a medical attention, the waiting can last weeks or months, and sometimes people dies waiting for medical attention. A solution to this situation is that the State gives more money to Public Health System, because today the spending on this is just 3, 5% of public budget. Finally, the right to health is not guaranteed in Constitution, but it is the right to choose between being in FONASA or ISAPRE. 

Santiago de Chile

Santiago is the saddest capital city of America Latina, and one of the unhappiest of the world.   Firstly, Santiago tops the list of people with depression, according to studies from the WHO. There may be some reasons to the depression of people, like that when a country gets develop in short time, there are more cases of depression, like in Korea and Chine, besides Chile.  In addition, according to the National Health Survey, 21, 67% of Chileans had depression sometime in their life. In the last years in Santiago there are more cases of depression in children, young people and young adults, increasing the amount of people with this disease. Finally, suicides have increased in the last 15 years.  To conclude, psychiatrist conclude that one main reason for this unhappiness of people is the develop that the country, and specially Santiago, is going through, where success is the most important thing, and that may be the reason why Santiago is one of the saddest capitals in the world.

Ignacio Castillo

My best holiday ever

The best holiday I´ve ever had were in Tierra del Fuego and Isla Navarino, about 4 years ago, where I stayed 2 weeks.

Tierra del Fuego is an island located at the end of the world at the southern end of the American continent, including places from Chile and Argentina, making it a very interesting place to visit because of its culture and landscapes. For example, you can navigate by the Beagle channel and enjoy the beautiful environment and the calm of the place.

Also, there is the chance to visit the southernmost locations of America traveling through the Beagle crossing the sea border between Chile and Argentina. We visited a small town called Puerto Williams in the Chilean side at Isla Navarino and a bigger city called Ushuaia in the Argentine side at Tierra del Fuego.

Finally, Being in Tierra del Fuego is a great opportunity to get more knowledge about the original people of the island: the Selknam, Yamanas and Kawesqar, something very important because their history, manners and language is being lost in time, and being there you can watch the art, learn about their history and also you can talk with the last Yamana, an old woman called María Calderón.

Maybe Tierra del Fuego is an inhospitable place, but being at the end of the world surrounded by the nature and people of the place makes it a unique experience and my best holiday ever.

In these days, work is something very important in people´s life. One spend most of the adult time working, so, choose a good work is crucial to have a life that you enjoy.

To me, be a good geographer would be my best job. It´s what I’m studying, and also what I chose to study. Nobody forced me to study this. I think it´d be a good job because this discipline gives you the chance to work for the nature and for the people. For example, make good planning to avoid risk involving damage to community and too as geographer you can worry about improving society´s relationship whit nature.

Another job I think is great is to be a teacher, especially a primary teacher. This is an important step in intellectual and spiritual growth of children, and as a teacher, you can motivate students to develop a critical thinking, as well as you can motivate them to have an independent view about the world.

The worst job to me is working in a multinational Pizza restaurant. I worked in one of these, and I had to work so hard, 6 days a week, and get an extremely low wage. It seemed a joke. My boss tried to compensate this bad wage by giving to me one free pizza every 6 days working. First I thought it was great, even the free pizza was the smaller, but then I was so tired of pizza that I couldn´t stand it more and I quit.

Another jobs that I think are bad, specifically boring, are the administrative ones, like been there sit for hours checking numbers and papers for other people who gives you bad wage. An example for this is to be an accountant. It´s just my opinion, some people could like it and I respect them. 

Copa América

Between 11 June and 4 July, took place in Chile the oldest tournament for football national teams in history. The interesting thing about this is that Chile won the Copa America for the very first time, and thus it was the first international cup won by the football national team of Chile. This first title was a shot of happiness to the people, no matter age or gender, everybody all over the country came out to celebrate this historic win when Chile, always used to moral victories, finally got a title.

Although an event like this makes most of people happy, this may cause bad consequences, principally because of the announcement of the president about a big financing, whit help from the state, to build a bigger and better training center for Chilean national football team, despite all the renovations that were made to actual trainiin center, Juan Pinto Duran, which has very good infrastructure.

It’s a shame that a big amount of money will be delivered to the football association, in detriment of many other sports which have historical worst economic conditions. Every time that Olympic Games starts, press tell us histories about desperate athletes looking for funding to participate in the Games, being forgotten by the government. Many times the savior of all this athletes is Leonardo Farkas, who put money from his pocket to finance travels and equipment of athletes.

No doubt that football just gave us a lot of happiness, may be unimaginable for many grandparents who thought they were going to die without seeing Chile won an international trophy, but I think that if the same benefits for football are given to other sports, we surely will be celebrating in Plaza Italia when we won some gol Medal in the Olympic Games, something not very common. 

Flood in the desert

The north of Chile is going through one of the hardest moments in a long time, because of the floods caused by the heaviest rains in 80 years. The worst situations are happening in Atacama region, where the towns were affected by overflow of the rivers that pass by the center of each town.

The effects of the disaster are catastrophic, whit more than 27.000 victims, thousands of houses destroyed and also at the moment 23 death people, number that could increase because there are also 53 missed people, number that day by day is increasing.

The disaster that is affecting the north of Chile is consequence of a long time of wrong urban planning. The organism responsible of organize the territory and where houses could be built didn´t consider that in the places where houses had been located, the river had get through some day and the possibility of a future overflow was high.  Not because this is one of the driest place in the world it means that it couldn´t happen again. 

Also the government’s reaction have been awful, showing that Onemi is most of the time useless, especially in hardest moments. The government should invest in emergency mechanism to prevent the people of situations like this in the north.

Whit some prevention the effects could be less than the reality that are leaving people in Atacama.

A lot of people affected have manifested the minimal attention that authorities have put on them and have shown their angry and desperation against government and local authorities protesting, being repressed by police, making all the ambient worst.

Many affected places haven’t get any help, victims are by their own going through all this hard time. It’s necessary that government improve the help to victims, so no one be left alone.