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New Virus, Old Problems
The new flu epidemic affecting some 40 countries has led to international concern and extreme measures aimed at avoiding a pandemic.
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ACN
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The new flu epidemic affecting some 40 countries has led to international concern and extreme measures aimed at avoiding a pandemic.
Even so, we must not forget about the permanent health problems facing humanity, particularly the poor.
According to the World Health Organization, close to 90 percent of deaths due to infectious diseases are from tuberculosis, diarrhea, measles, malaria and HIV/AIDS and mainly affect poor people.
HIV/AIDS kills 1 million people each year, tuberculosis 1.5 million, measles 900,000 and malaria between 1.5 and 2.7 million --most of whom are children.
While the world focus is on the flu, each day thousands of people in Africa die of diseases that could have been easily prevented or cured.
AP reporter David Sanders, a health professor in South Africa, asks the question: “Why don’t we have a similar emergency mobilization against illnesses like diarrhea that kills 2.5 million children each year?”
“One cannot help but ask whether this is an expression of a North-South division,” said Sanders, one of the foremost health experts in South Africa.
The news agency adds that almost 3,000 children die each day from malaria, often because they lack mosquito netting to cover their beds. This happens at the same time that the large banks receive millions of dollars in bailouts.
It reminds me of a phrase by Ernesto Che Guevara: “The life of one human being is more valuable than all the richness of the richest man on earth.”
This philosophy has been applied in Cuba and the island now contrasts greatly from other developing nations. For example, I read that more than
1,900 people have died and between 56,000 have become ill since January due to the meningitis epidemic that has hit Nigeria, Niger and Chad; but this has gotten little international attention.
An article published in the Tribuna de la Habana last January by Lissette Martin comments that because sales were not lucrative, pharmaceutical transnationals suppliers of the anti meningitis type A vaccine, decided not to continue producing them.
“Business is business,” goes the mantra of free enterprise, that is now making lots of money from this new epidemic.
In July 2006, the World Health Organization asked Havana’s Finlay Institute to produce millions of doses the meningitis vaccine for the so called meningitis belt in Africa which includes 21 countries from Ethiopia to Senegal, with 400 million people at risk.
A new plant was built and now the institute is producing large quantities of the vaccine. And people are demanding gestures from Cuba? Well there’s one.
Even so, we must not forget about the permanent health problems facing humanity, particularly the poor.
According to the World Health Organization, close to 90 percent of deaths due to infectious diseases are from tuberculosis, diarrhea, measles, malaria and HIV/AIDS and mainly affect poor people.
HIV/AIDS kills 1 million people each year, tuberculosis 1.5 million, measles 900,000 and malaria between 1.5 and 2.7 million --most of whom are children.
While the world focus is on the flu, each day thousands of people in Africa die of diseases that could have been easily prevented or cured.
AP reporter David Sanders, a health professor in South Africa, asks the question: “Why don’t we have a similar emergency mobilization against illnesses like diarrhea that kills 2.5 million children each year?”
“One cannot help but ask whether this is an expression of a North-South division,” said Sanders, one of the foremost health experts in South Africa.
The news agency adds that almost 3,000 children die each day from malaria, often because they lack mosquito netting to cover their beds. This happens at the same time that the large banks receive millions of dollars in bailouts.
It reminds me of a phrase by Ernesto Che Guevara: “The life of one human being is more valuable than all the richness of the richest man on earth.”
This philosophy has been applied in Cuba and the island now contrasts greatly from other developing nations. For example, I read that more than
1,900 people have died and between 56,000 have become ill since January due to the meningitis epidemic that has hit Nigeria, Niger and Chad; but this has gotten little international attention.
An article published in the Tribuna de la Habana last January by Lissette Martin comments that because sales were not lucrative, pharmaceutical transnationals suppliers of the anti meningitis type A vaccine, decided not to continue producing them.
“Business is business,” goes the mantra of free enterprise, that is now making lots of money from this new epidemic.
In July 2006, the World Health Organization asked Havana’s Finlay Institute to produce millions of doses the meningitis vaccine for the so called meningitis belt in Africa which includes 21 countries from Ethiopia to Senegal, with 400 million people at risk.
A new plant was built and now the institute is producing large quantities of the vaccine. And people are demanding gestures from Cuba? Well there’s one.