Pressure Drug Giants to Help the Poor and Sick
The Universe
(October 05, 2003)
The most convincing evidence that the Kingdom of God was unfolding on earth was the profound respect and the cures that Jesus brought to the poor and the sick.
That is where He chose to be, with the poor and the wretched of the earth, to give them dignity as God’s children. He wants us to find Him there in the suffering impoverished people. We must help them. Thousands of volunteers, church workers, religious and medical people are trying to ease the suffering but they don't have the drugs to fight the diseases. They need our support.
Christians in the Britain, Ireland and other developed nations can do much more to influence their governments and the international drug companies to provide these drugs and save lives.
Protest does pay. Under intense international pressure some pharmaceutical companies have been shamed into providing their HIV/AIDS drugs to the poor nations at cost price or below.
Yet that is small comfort because millions of impoverished sufferers still cannot even afford the $1 a day that will keep them alive. Besides, a health care and distribution system has to be in place to deliver the drugs reliably, otherwise the virus can become resistant. The pharmaceutical companies make little effort to make their cheap drugs available in the poor nations since they get no profit from them. However the poor make good guinea pigs to develop drugs that only the rich can afford.
Twenty conglomerates account for 65 per cent of the global drug market. The diseases that get the most research spending are not malaria and tuberculoses, which plague the poor, but those of the rich such as obesity, heart disease, diabetes, cancer and sexual dysfunction.
Protest and action for justice are effective means to change the inequality that allows the wealthy to live and leaves the deprived to die. World public opinion has forced tablet tycoons to hand over the technology of certain drugs to countries in dire need. Swiss manufacturer Roche gave Brazil the formula for a drug effective against Chagas disease, a deadly tropical parasite.
There are medical practitioners of good conscience who are doing research into medicine that will help the poor. The Charity Medecins sans Frontieres is forming a new international initiative to research cures for the diseases of the poor. Singapore is funding research into tuberculoses. George W. Bush has pledged $15 billion over ten years to fight disease in Africa and Bill Gates of Microsoft is spending some of his millions on the same cause.
Change for the better is coming, however slowly. We must never give up hope that compassion and love will overcome greed. We can make the healing presence of Christ visible to all who suffer if we share.
