Friday, February 11, 2011

No money, no health


Children are entitled to enjoy the highest attainable standard of health and access to medical services and rehabilitation, with special emphasis on those related to primary health care, preventive care and reducing infant mortality. The state is obliged to take the necessary measures aimed at abolishing traditional practices prejudicial to children's health.
Convention on the Rights of the Child


I have repeatedly heard the words of Zainab Salbi (President and founder of Women for Women International - WFWI) in her address to the forum TED Global 2010.
She tells her personal story as a child living during Iraq bombing. And remember one night when a missile exploded near her home. She thanked God because that night, she and her family saved their lifes.
The next day, a desperate mother entered her brother's classroom asking, please, for any remembrance of her son who died in an explosion, because she had nothing left to remember him, nor a photograph.
That child who died was a friend of Zainab's brother, and he died in last night's explosion.

Zainab has regretted every day of her life for thanking God that night.

When I read the statistics of infant mortality due to what Doctors Without Borders (MSF) called "neglected diseases"  I can not have a feeling more similar to that of Zainab.

Can I thank God for living in a developed country with a health system that guarantees me primary care, specialty care and preventive care while I think that my taxes are supporting a pharmaceutical industry that concentrates 90% of global spending on medical research on health problems that affect less than 10% of world population, the richest 10%?

The same pharmaceutical industry acting as a lobby with the governments of rich countries to promote the signing of Free Trade Agreements that prevent the production of affordable medicines, and the export to certain countries which are desperately in need of them, in which are sold at a higher price.

I can not give thanks for how lucky I am when I think that, right now, a mother that can not  afford  an expensive treatment, or unable to access the NGOs working in the field of health, the only chance she has is to ask God to save his son.

The only thing that saves me from this, and allows me to be grateful, is the fact to take action against this so unfortunate reality.




Take action:
 


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