Malaria is a disease that kills one to three million people a year. 300 to 500 million cases are reported. It's estimated that Africa loses about 13 billion dollars a year to the disease. Five dollars can save a life. We can send people to the moon; we can see if there's life on Mars - why can't we get five-dollar nets to 500 million people?
The poorest parts of the world are by and large the places in which one can best view the worst of medicine and not because doctors in these countries have different ideas about what constitutes modern medicine. It's the system and its limitations that are to blame.
Health without money is halfe an ague.
The fact is that Medicaid doesn't even serve well the medical needs of people who should be its principal focus - Americans who are poor in large part because their chronic health problems leave them unable to earn a stable income.
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.
I got a taste when I was in Kenya a while ago of what medical care was in rural Africa. I was in a town of about 10,000 people, and a shipping container with a rusty microscope was their medical clinic.
You don't have to be rich to be healthy. That's such a misconception.
The burden of health care shouldn't be borne by the poorest families. We should have equity within health systems so that families are able to cope with serious illness and not be driven into poverty and relationship breakdown because they don't have access to health care.
