Sean Penn Quotes

90 percent of children with leukemia can be cured, but 90 percent of the children with that disease in the world’s 25 poorest countries die from it.

Poor kids are much more likely to become sick than their richer counterparts, but much less likely to have health insurance. Talk about a double whammy.

The medical profession [in Egypt] is also very commercial. Health is not given to the poor. You know, if you have money, you have medical care; if you do not, then you are in trouble. I was not ready at all to build my economic security on the diseases of people, on suffering, especially of women and children. So, in a way, I rebelled against it.

Never have so many had such broad and advanced access to health care. But never have so many been denied access to health.

It is clear that the pharmaceutical industry is not, by any stretch of the imagination, doing enough to ensure that the poor have access to adequate medical care.

There are places in the world that the power goes out in hospitals, and there isn't clean water, and it's horrific.

One in seven Americans, including more than 8 million children, does not have even basic healthcare coverage.

The idea that because you're born in Haiti you could die having a child. The idea that because you're born in you know Malawi your children may go to bed hungry. We want to take some of the chance out of that.

Civil and political rights are critical, but not often the real problem for the destitute sick. My patients in Haiti can now vote but they can't get medical care or clean water.

The poor people drink water which is very good and very common in this country.

The world is rich enought today that the idea of millions of children dying of disease is unacceptable. We have the resouurces and know how to prevent this.

Your care and your treatment shouldn't be dictated by your ZIP code.

There is no mercy in a system that makes health care a luxury. There is no mercy in a country that turns their back on those most in need of protection: the elderly, the poor, the sick, and the suffering.

I'm surviving a life-threatening illness. Many do not, such as those without celebrity and fortune who have to depend on the public healthcare system.

Stopping TB requires a government program that functions every day of the year, and that's hard in certain parts of the world. And partly it's because of who tuberculosis affects: It tends to affect the poor and disenfranchised most.

I know firsthand how our being such a rural state presents challenges to healthcare.

We have a failing Medicaid system, and you know who that's going to hurt in the end are the most vulnerable in people in our society.

Too many upstate New Yorkers have to drive 30 minutes or more to see a doctor.

Medical disenfranchisement is fueled by a host of factors that include worsening shortage of primary care doctors in needy communities and a troubling scarcity of providers willing to treat the uninsured or publicly insured. Adding to the trend are fewer medical students choosing primary care over more lucrative and specialized fields.

We need to make sure that access to a curative drug doesn't become a yardstick by which poverty is eventually measured. Doing so requires a shared commitment between innovators and the insurance plans that are harder pressed to offer these advances to the poor.

We live in a world, it's very hard for Americans to understand that every 20 seconds a kid dies, a kid under the age of five, right, dies somewhere on the Earth because of lack of access to clean water and sanitation. Every 20 seconds that happens on our planet. It's just very hard for us to relate to.

I was in a town of about 10,000 people, and a shipping container with a rusty microscope was their medical clinic.

Even if one child falls in a borewell, the entire country gets worried; we must generate more awareness about hundreds of children who are unable to survive due to lack of primary healthcare facilities.

A little child in Ethiopia will die before this song is through.

It's shocking to me still, that children - just because of where they're born - are born into a life of extreme poverty and hunger. Humans, we can survive without a lot of luxuries we are lucky to live with. But the thing we need most is healthy food and clean water. Without that we can't survive and we can't thrive.