That compares to an average life span for Russians in 1994 of 59 years. In June, thanks to a donation from a commercial pharmacy, they brought heart and blood-pressure medicine to a clinic in the area. They also delivered 17 boxes of medical supplies for the war-torn Chechnya region, in response to a call for help from the United Nations. The donated supplies came from health care administrator and philanthropist Elizabeth Plott. In nearby refugee camps, makeshift hospitals and war-ravaged villages, they saw victims of shrapnel wounds, dehydration, lice infestations and severe respiratory and diarrheal illnesses from overcrowded, unsanitary conditions.
Children often drive home the horror of war.
A harbinger of what could erupt again in Abkhazia, the boy's injury drove home the urgency of solving tensions between Georgians and Abkhazians. And so, in Sukhumi, once one of the prettiest resorts on the Black Sea and now virtually a bombed-out shell, the UCI group met for six days with historians, linguists, anthropologists and members of the breakaway nation's parliament and ministries of defense and foreign affairs. The seminar's goal was to devise strategies for Abkhazians and Georgians to begin a dialogue on ways to mend their differences. To that end, DiMento, a trained mediator and a professor of urban and regional planning in UCI's School of Social Ecology, demonstrated dispute resolution techniques used in the United States. Garb, also a trained mediator, discussed ways in which societies in Africa, Central America and Hawaii resolve conflict.