Rome (Fides Service ) – “It is Christmas:
how many children all over the world will not even dream of toys, or
Father Christmas because they are struggling against hunger or disease
to survive?” Camillan priest Father Jacques Simporè, an
expert in genetics living in Burkina Faso, shared his opinion with Fides.
HOW DOES GLOBALISATION AFFECT THE DIFFUSION OF CERTAIN DISEASES IN THE
WORLD.?
Today, thanks to the media, telephone, satellites, the Internet and
to modern transport, air travel, etc the world is a village where people
buy and sell, learn and teach, progress in all fields; in brief where
people influence each other in their political, cultural, social convictions
and in the fields of science and health. Every where in the world thanks
to globalisation science and medicine push forward towards new frontiers
of knowledge and technology. Now we realise that science without conscience
would be the ruin of humanity. It suffices to look at Hiroshima, Nagasaki,
Tschernobyl; of the possibilities of human cloning, the use of embryo
stem cells; mad cow disease, green house effect, the ghost of SARS,
the impact AIDS and other pathologies under control in the past but
even more virulent today, to ask ourselves: “Homo sapiens, sapiens
quo vadis?”, Homo sapiens, you know so much where are you directed?
What will be your future? Do you realise that what you do in your little
corner of the earth could affect the world and the future? “It
is no good shutting your eyes when your neighbour’s home is burning”
an African proverb says, because the flames will reach your house too.
Today, AIDS, SARS, cholera, TB, malaria, are no longer isolated diseases.
SARS could spread beyond China and Asia. In the cold season anyone,
anywhere could contract SARS with the movement of people today. Malnutrition
which causes kwashiorkor, marasmus and lack of vitamins a major threat
children under 5 in developing countries while over-feeding in Europe
and North America, causes diabetes, obesity and heart conditions. In
any case under and over eating are malnutrition. In the north and in
the south of the world health is a problem.
ARE THERE AREAS OF THE PLANET WHICH EVERY DAY ARE FACED WITH UNDER-DEVELOPMENT
AND ENDEMIC DISEASES WHICH CAN BE AND ARE OBSTACLES TO DEVELOPMENT
FOR THOSE COUNTRIES?
Certainly in some parts of our planet every day children young people
teachers, farmers, nurses sate workers are suddenly struck by TB meningitis,
malaria, dracunculosi, river blindness, yellow fever, leprosy, Boruli
ulcers just to mention a few. Very often these areas medicines are
not available. Even if people survive they often remain with a physical
or mental disability. With the problem of AIDS, how many African states
today find it difficult to keep open elementary schools because teachers
die of HIV/AIDS? How many children today are totally abandoned and
without a future because their mother or father had a disease which
caused irreversible infirmity?
Among the events which prevent development in many third world countries,
we see tribal wars, political violence and bad management of public
funds. However we must not forget that many of these poor countries
are zones of endemic invalidating diseases which strike indiscriminately
their active population and consequently slow down their integral
development: economic, intellectual, spiritual, human... Faced with
this tragic situation what can developed countries do? What is needed
is targeted co-ordination. What type of health care co-ordination
North/South is needed to eliminate the serious diseases affecting
humanity? We must have: short term projects such as speedy action
against endemic and epidemic diseases on the South; emergency programmes
in the event of calamities (war, natural disaster, famine…);
long term programmes: to fight poverty; adequate food supplies for
underfed children; technological exporting North-South through formation
of Southern researchers in the west, sending of laureate , researchers,
teachers to the South to galvanise stimulate, teach techniques of
research and development as well as community preventive medical programmes
according to the Alma Ata viewpoint…
Health cooperation North South is connected with political will. For
example if a doctor, a researcher, a nurse is willing to go for a
period of time to the South the help people in a programme of bilateral
development and the hospital or clinic where the volunteer works refuses
to continue to pay his or her salary; “that person cannot live
on air and water in the South!” Good north south collaboration
calls for synergy of action.
TODAY THE SCOURGE OF AIDS IS AFFECTING MANY PARTS OF THE PLANET:
DECIMATED POPULATIONS, GHOST VILLAGES, ORPHANED CHILDREN ARE THE SCENES
OF THIS TRAGEDY. HOW CAN PROFIT AND GLOBAL HEALTH BE COMBINED?
Many pharmaceutical companies invest record sums of money in research
on AIDS and drugs. Their aim was to retrieve the money invested, indeed
to reap the benefit of the discovery of a magic molecule which would
affect HIV. Certainly, without money there can be no research, and
without research there can be no new drugs. Research demands in general
colossal investment. Today some drugs against AIDS have been discovered,
produced and accumulated in view of sale. But in fact more than 40
million, that is 90% of HIV/AIDS sufferers in the world are poor.
Even if they were to sell their fields, their huts, they could never
afford to buy anti-retroviral drugs. Hic et nunc, whole populations
are decimated, we have ghost villages, orphaned children, infected
new born babies who die. How can be combine profit with health? Can
pharmaceutical solve this question of solidarity without the support
of the international community? Definitely not! What is needed is
a new economic policy with global consensus so as not to leave the
poor to die of AIDS for lack of drugs which are stored somewhere else.
It is Christmas: how many children all over the world will not even
dream of toys, or Father Christmas because they are struggling against
hunger or disease to survive?” Christmas is a time of joy, life,
of the light of God which illuminates are life as believers; despite
this joy in the corner of our earth, in the dark there is a sick child
in the arms of his desperate mother. Faced with the atrocious suffering
of her child, caused by malaria, marasmus, or AIDS, this young mother,
whose eyes are fountains of tears, has lost all hope. Nevertheless
the philosopher who at dusk sees with his eyes of lynx can see the
dawn whispers in her ear: “Have faith because every person,
even if he or she is in the dark, is walking towards the light”.
(2/1/2004 Fides Service; lines:98 words:1296)
IN-DEPHT STUDY
