I only found out about this by chance, but today (15th October) is Blog Action Day. The aim is to get thousands of bloggers to unite and all talk about the same subject, which this year is poverty. The aim is “to raise awareness, initiate action and to shake the web”. As most bloggers have different areas of interest, they should write about how poverty encroaches on those interests.
My main area of interest is health, so I would like to talk about it from 2 angles. First of all from a First World perspective, then from a Third World Perspective.
A serious health issue in the developed First World can cause a lot of hardship. Not only for the sick person who is unable to work, but also if they require a full time carer (who is usually a family member), then the carer cannot work either. Having been a carer to my partner, Michele, who sadly passed away after a very long fight with cancer, I can vouch as the financial strain.
The UK government gives a carers allowance, but it is a pittance and you have to qualify for it. The public policy states that the government supports carers to look after loved ones at home. Of course they do, it is a very cheap option for the government, keeps the hospital beds free and the family bare the brunt of the cost. Add to this, Michele was following mainly alternative therapies which cost an arm and a leg and the government will not help with this either. When you are in that position of having to reduce your income because you can’t work, yet your expenses are rising due to the costs of treatment, you are facing a nightmare situation.
There must be hundreds of thousands or even millions of people in this trap of just having to keep spending, borrowing, spending, borrowing and being completely hamstrung as to being able to do anything about it. Many will lose their homes. This can be an extremely lonely place to be as few people will help you. Some will even stop coming to visit you as they feel uncomfortable around illness. Many people end up isolated and feeling very alone (both patient and carer).
If you want to help poverty but you don’t feel that you have any spare money to donate, then maybe you can just give some time instead. Go and visit a sick friend. Take them out for a few hours and give their carer a break too, as that is the person who has to carry the burden of everything in that household.
However, bad it is in developed World, it has to be even worse in the Third World, where often the medical supplies are simply just not there. Many people die of diseases that can be easily cured in the West because they (or their government) can not afford the medicines.
Pharmaceutical companies are not about making medicines to cure people, they are all about making medicines to make money. They can only make money if they can patent something. I have pointed out before that in the days of the sailing ships, it was discovered that oranges and limes (Vitamin C) could cure scurvy, one the most feared diseases of the day. Hence the nickname of “Limeys” for Brits. However, if that were to be discovered today, Vitamin C could never be promoted as a cure for scurvy because nobody can patent oranges and limes. Hence nobody would pay the enormous sum of money to complete the FDA (or other countries equivalent) testing.
This means that many very cheap herbal and nutritional cures (like limes for scurvy) cannot be used in the West and the West will not supply “unproven” medicines to the Third World. It all protects the interests of the Pharmaceutical companies. I believe that some international body (maybe the UN World Health Organisation) should pay for and oversee the testing of herbal and nutritional remedies by the FDA, so that they too can be accepted as cures and medicines. Funding for this testing should be divided between the governments of the richer countries, this way no firm or corporation is out of pocket, yet many cheap herbal and nutritional remedies/medicines could be made available to the poorest countries of the world who suffer the worst diseases, but can afford the least medicines. It would also reduce the costs of health care in the West too. Somewhere a campaign has to be set up to lobby for this.
Finally, Nutronix International market an advanced colloidal silver solution, that has been proven in African trials to cure malaria. However, it has yet to be sanctioned by the FDA, so the West will not be supplying this cheap cure to the worst hit African countries. Nutronix however have taken their own initiative and are asking customer to purchase bottles of the colloidal silver solution at a special low price to donate to African malaria clinics. For every bottle donated by a customer, Nutronix will be donate another bottle of colloidal silver solution for free.
For just $10, you could save a child’s life from Malaria.
