Worldwide Healthcare Crisis

According to Amnesty International, "Approximately, 1000 women die each day from complications during pregnancy or childbirth. Nearly all maternal deaths and disabilities could be prevented." I am a highschool student, and I've been studying the worldwide healthcare crisis for a while. I've learned that we have enough resources to provide healthcare to people all around the world, but we allow people to die.  A lot of people believe that everyone has a right to life. I am one of those people, but we need to act, not just speak.

From Amnesty International

During my studies, , I read an article from the Center of Disease Control and Pervention, which stated “as of March 31, 2013, 652,730 cases and 8,060 deaths have been reported since the cholera epidemic began in Haiti. Among the cases reported, 360,934 (55.3%) were hospitalized.” The number of people hospitalized is barely more than half the people with the disease. Clearly, Haiti needs resources to help more people. Then, perhaps some of the 8,060 people could have lived. Another article I read in Amnesty International said “45% of mothers in Zimbabwe have no access to a postnatal check by a trained health prov

ider. Amnesty International documented the deaths of 21 infants in a six month period in 2010. Adequate living conditions and access to necessary health services after delivery could have prevented many of these deaths.” It also stated, “Women often give birth in unhygienic conditions in their plastic shacks and without skilled birth attendants” and “Inability to afford health care affects 75% of women in the lowest five wealth groups in Zimbabwe, of which most of the residents in these informal settlements fall.” These are preventable deaths of mothers and children that we are doing nothing about. What these stories show me is that death and suffering is taking place that we could prevent, but we aren’t.

As a part of my research, I read Mountains Beyond Mountains, a book by Tracy Kidder. In the book, Tracy travels to Haiti and meets up with a Doctor there named Paul Farmer. At one part of the book, they talk about how countries with different amounts of wealth have different mortality rates for people dying early on in their lives. Kidder writes, "Most of Haiti would wear the color of ill health, Bbt parts of the hills above Port-Au-Prince would be a patch of well-being. The map of the United States, by contrast, would depict a healthy nation speckled with disease. In Boston's Mission Hill neighborhood, right next to the Brigham, for instance, infant mortality is higher than in Cuba. In New York City's Harlem, a famous stuff from 1990 showed, death rates for males between the ages of five and sixty-five were higher than in Bangladesh." These statistics are shocking, but what they show is that poverty correlates to disease and death, and while people obviously still would die young if they had the money for resources, the numbers would be magnitudes less. What this proves is that this is a solvable problem. There are parts of the world where disease rates have decreased dramatically, due to having the necessary resources. We could provide the rest of the world with them, but some people need to be generous.

If everyone was generous, we could fix this crisis. And it clearly is a crisis. We need to work together, because people are dying, and we can't fix this alone. There are many organizations you can donate to to help people get healthcare, but I would recommend Partners In Health. You can donate money to them at pih.org. All the money you give to them goes to saving the lives of people who don't have healthcare, in Haiti and elsewhere. If everyone gave a dollar, the world of healthcare would be revolutionized. People who would die otherwise will live.