Coan Park Afternoons pass more slowly now at the biggest park in East Atlanta’s Edgewood neighborhood. Coan Park is surrounded by mid-sized suburban homes, starting at the intersection of Woodbine and Anniston and ending in front of Maynard Jackson High School. The streets and public spaces honor famous civil rights activists, like Hosea Williams. Named after philanthropist Wesley Coan, the neighborhood park is now managed by the Health Education and Communication Center of Atlanta, a distributor of health services and products.
Schoolchildren don’t rush to the playground after stepping off the bus. “It’s colder nowadays, and the children don’t want to be all bundled up outside when they got Xboxes and Nintendos at home,” says a Parks, Recreation and Cultural Affairs employee wishing to remain anonymous. Click here to view the video Podcast: Antibiotic treatments becoming less effective In 1979 Bobbie Smith took her four year-old son Chris to a pediatrician and received a prescription for antibiotics. After her son developed diarrhea and persistent sleepiness, she went to a specialist for a second opinion.
"When I parked in underground parking, a bunch of doctors came out to help me carry Chris in, it was like a movie. You know, they just don’t do that. They were very excited because this was a test of a new theory." Chris was diagnosed with a C. diff (See-diff) infection, caused when a bacteria known as Clostridium difficile (claus-strid-dee-um diff-fiss-seal) invades the intestines and interrupts digestion and absorption of nutrients. Emory School of Medicine professor Shonna (SHAW-na) McBride has been studying the bacteria, which she says has a natural resistance to many antibiotics. "A lot of antibiotics that people take aren’t targeting C. diff anyway, and C. diff can grow in the presence of those antibiotics at pretty high concentrations." Click here to listen to the podcast Antibiotic treatments becoming less effective In 1979, Bobbie Smith’s four year-old son Chris received a prescription from a general pediatrician. After two rounds of antibiotic treatment for what seemed to be a routine infection, Chris developed diarrhea and had a hard time waking up. His mother took him to a specialist.
“When I parked in underground parking, a bunch of doctors came out to help me carry Chris in, it was like a movie,” Smith says, who asked to go by her maiden name. “They were very excited because this was a test of a new theory.” The four year-old had contracted a C. diff infection, a bacterial disease that invades the intestines and causes lesions to form. C. diff had been recognized and studied for years leading up to Chris’s infection. But the treatment Chris originally received had made the bacteria more robust, and resistant to common antibiotics. Click here to continue the article |