Vaccine or Viagra: The Debate Continues
Budgets are finite but the health care demands are almost infinite in the developing nations. From this truism springs one of the characteristics of the developing world - that the developing nations are crawling way behind in life saving medical cares too.
Even in the modern 21st century, people are still dying from various miniature diseases due to the poverty and non accessibility of drugs in the remotest corners of the developing nations, though experts claim that the health care in the developing world is much better than in the past.
Yes, health care facilities have improved drastically, but only for the folks of urban cities and towns only. Health care systems have always been manipulated by the elites and in the developing world, the middle class or the upper class get more out of health services because they have more access than the poor.
In most of the developing nations, the health budgets are spent disproportionately in the big cities, and on treating expensive rich man’s diseases only, leaving the poor in the backyard of their diseases.
This means that as the government spends a major bulk of the budget on modern hospitals in the capital, rural and semi-rural clinics, which serve a much larger and needier population then these rich city folks, run out of even cheap life saving drugs. Thus it can be stated that an irrational health policy and budget is killing rural peoples of the developing world.
But nonetheless, amidst this all, Health care in the villages has improved much too but it is not yet enough to curb the diseases engulfing these backward regions. Most people in the villages are sick because they are poor and they are poor because they are sick.
Meanwhile, on the other hand, even the poorest of the poor are living longer, and they are living longer not only because of the increment in the natural human life span but because many diseases to some extent has been tamed by the modern medicines and technologies.
Poor people now receive superior medicine facilities than rich ones did five decades ago.
“Between 1960 and 1995, life expectancy in poor countries rose by 22 years, largely because modern medicines prevented millions of premature deaths. In the 1950s, 15% of children died before their fifth birthday; now only 4% do,” according to the reports.
“A child born in the developing world today can expect to live several years longer than one born 30 years ago. Even in the world’s 40 poorest countries, infant mortality in the past 30 years has fallen by a third,” according to the reports.
But despite these and many other gigantic advances in health science followed by the emergence of organization such as World Health Organization (WHO) and United Nations International Children Fund (UNICEF), various health issues health remains a huge problem for the poor and the needy.
There are plenty of scars left. According to the reports, thirty thousand children under five die each day from preventable causes such as diarrhea and malaria. And in Africa, the rise in life expectancy stopped after 1990 as people started dying younger because of AIDS.
Why are they dying? One school of thought says that they are dying because the medical research is done in rich countries, for the benefit of rich people.
In brief, they are busy making Viagra and not cheaper vaccines for curing AIDS. According to this school of thought the biggest profits are not to be made from making drugs to curb the AIDS but they are to be made from tackling sexual conditions that affects lots of Westerners, such as heart disease and cancer.
Their claim is well supported by this report. Take for instance this report as published by The Economist. It has been reported that in 1998, the world spent $70 billion on health research, but only $300m of this was directed at developing an AIDS vaccine, and a piffling $100m was devoted to malaria research.
But it isn’t wise to blame the drug firms always because many nations health care system are in mess due to the corruption, poverty, and civil war. Let us not forget that several drug firms have started to offer AIDS drugs to Africans at a little as a tenth of their normal price, but in most parts of Africa, it is unaffordable even if it is sold at cost.
Now, in this competitive world, no firms will remain in the business if it starts selling its product at the cost. This economic reality must be realized but subsidies should not be ruled out because poor nations need help from these big drug firms too.
Hence, considering various factors, let’s stop blaming the rich nations or the rich drug firms, and together declare war on diseases in poor countries. Encouragingly, recent decades have seen mammoth progress in its struggle against sickness. But the bad news is that not everyone has benefited.
There is a huge gap and this gap could be well reduced by the Rich countries if it starts giving more to the poor counties in their fight against diseases. But it’s not always good to depend on the rich nations only, as fighting disease in poor countries lies with the poor countries themselves.
What are the solutions? There are various solutions and to begin with government of the developing countries should team up with the WHO and its partner organizations and first find out the diseases that are causing the greatest burden to their people, and allocate whatever health budgets they have to curb these diseases in a nominal cost. This is what they should be doing and once the diseases are labeled it will be easier for the officials/government and the organization involved in curbing these diseases and raising awareness in the rural societies.
There are not only expensive medicines. There are cheap medicines too. And fortunately, these days, various cheap and effective treatments exist for common diseases, and if applied methodically could save the lives of millions in the developing world. Oral-rehydration, ear drops, DOTS treatment for tuberculosis, Salt-Sugar and Water mixture for diarrhea, and various other vaccinations are some of the examples.
But nonetheless, even in the midst of this all, rich nations should step in because even if all developing world allocates its budget rationally, there are every chances of many more children dying due to the lack of even cheapest of the cheapest pills. Why? The answer is simple. The poorest nations do not have the money to provide even basic medicines to its citizens. This is why, various pro- poor organizations advocates the rich countries to step in and help the poor nations in their fight against the diseases.
But even if the rich countries step in, and funnel the poor nations with money, most analysts think that there will be many practical difficulties such as civil war, political instability, and hyper corruption to name a few for the money to show its final result. But past results has shown that despite these difficulties achievement can be achieved.
Moreover, whatever the obstacles, the rich world should spend more on healing the sick in poor countries. Colossal number of lives could be saved and immeasurable suffering relieved, if rich countries and rich drug firms can sneak in. But these donors should keep a constant watch on these poor nations because how their money is spent is more important than how much is spent.
Finally, I am not advocating that rich nations and their drug firms, shouldn’t focus on Viagra, they should, and they should focus in other prime diseases such as cancer and heart diseases too, but my request to them, on the behalf of the developing nations is, please do not neglect cheap, simple life savers, such as eye drops to prevent blindness, a capsule to kill the hookworms, the rehydration salts to stop children dying of diarrhea, and bed- nets to keep malarial mosquitoes and other blood sucking leeches at bay too.