The world is awash with campaigns against food wastage. Many people now know that we produce more food than we consume globally. What is hidden glaringly before the eyes of many is that we also produce more medicines than are consumed. It’s known and it has even been overstated that we should all have access to a standard of health that is fitting of human dignity (WHO). Why haven’t we even surpassed that threshold? It is a blessing human dignity is an ideal. This means that we can choose to make it honorable or we can set the standards in the gutters.
This generation is waiting; it is sure that the tunnel itself will become light and until everyone can have affordable access to medicines and health support that ensures that they live their lives to their optimum potential for their own good and for the shared happiness of society, the long walk to freedom for us has just began. This walk does not have to be long.
Many lifesaving equipment remain out of the reach of a lot of us because just like the grains and food that are thrown away, the same happens for medical products. What is my opinion about the problem? Well, since many people these days are familiar with the fact that tons of food goes to waste every year but remain oblivious to the wastage of the of life saving vaccines, medicines and machines that become obsolete due to the frightful prices placed on them, we can ask ourselves what we can do about this.
Wasting Health products (medicines and health products that waste and are destroyed/ useful health Equipment) that get obsolete without ever serving their purpose and are finally sent to the crusher. If you perceive that this is a sermon for another cycle of philanthropy, then I should clearly state at this juncture that this is nothing of the sort. The unsustainable philanthropy that soothes the hearts of those who possess in their hands the hammer as a favorite tool for resolving problems for which many times they are partly responsible. It is my opinion rather, that citizens in these nations lacking adequate Health facilities can and definitely should make demands for these services from their institutions because participatory citizenship which is the oil of the democratic process does not end at the polls and especially when your health is the subject of discourse. Until people everywhere are able to do so, this sewer of preventable diseases will unjustifiably remain the dwelling of a huge lot of us.
The highly effective medical technology and products that are available but not accessible to everyone calls to mind the Victorian days when sugar infused in tea and coffee was a ritual only performed by the supremely rich and powerful. Today, we might be doing all we can to cut down the excess sugar that both the rich and poor have unlimited access to through sugar tax and behavioural modification but we are doing very little to ensure that people; irrespective of social class and wealth can have access to accurate and timely diagnosis with novel technology. This is not even utopian day-dreaming, if you think it is, you might have to ask Hippocrates what he thinks about this.
While tons of medical products are churned out of factories the world over, each year only to meet their expiry dates on the shelves and lose their potency. The reasons for this shameful phenomenon are many-just one is the Band-Aid politics that we engage in using health products as negotiation chips while being oblivious to the fact that lives are put at risk while we pause time to savour the limelight of public affirmation. It is not that we do not know what needs to be done to reverse this negative trend but the pleasures of incessantly tossing a coin about keeps many leaders from making decisions that will move the health of all of us towards a more dignified life.
Here is something interesting to think about; isn’t it wonderfully mysterious how falsified medicines are available in emerging economies but nearly absent in developed ones. In response to the public outcry to the 2014 Ebola outbreak, several vaccines were produced and resources diverted in spite of the burden of the many millions of people who suffer daily and chronically from curable diseases. This flagrant waste triggered by an availability cascade of the severity of Ebola, diverted the public from the real problems that decimate them. It’s beautiful that everyone is assuaged now. Isn’t it? Until we realign our priorities and target health issues that affect people, since policies are made to please the public, more work should be done to educate the public on these issues, so that they can choose intelligently to apply their scientific resources in the right direction. Since the world does not lack the resources to make this happen, we can choose to teach ourselves how to apply our resources or we can continue to ride in the beautiful ferry of ignorance until nature teaches us another humble lesson in the proportions of the Spanish flu.