Global health
why do articles like this annoy me so much?
as doctors-in-training, are we really so naive to believe that spending 6 weeks petitioning an organization that has been around for 60 years would be productive use of our medical training? and if UNICEF is doing such a good job of abolishing child hunger and malnutrition in Africa, then why is there still so much child hunger and malnutrition in Africa??
i have vented about this before. i guess i won’t get into it again, but this month’s Canadian Medical Association Journal happens to have a slew of articles on global health and poverty. and many of you know i have rather strong feelings on the topic of foreign aid.
this quote is from another article in the same issue, just a little further up the Table of Contents:
In Ottawa in 2006, 1163 children and 9010 people spent time in a shelter for the homeless. This is an increase from 8664 people only 2 years before. In addition to this substantial increase, the face of homelessness has changed from single adult male alcoholics to adolescents, single mothers, underemployed people, elderly people and recent immigrants.
how many homeless people are there in your community? and why doesn’t global health ever seem to start in our own backyard?
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October 23rd, 2007 at 7:45 am
because admitting that would be admitting we have faults, which seems to be out of vogue these days. we’re pretty good at being delusional or, at the very least, ignoring what’s right in front of us. people get jaded by the kids from the burbs out slumming, panhandlers with cel phones, dealers, and prostitutes that flood the shelters, and usually lump everyone into the same group, forgetting that there are a lot of people with real needs. they can’t be in our back yard, can they?
what constantly blows my ever-lovin-freaking-mind is how much money our government, ministries, and boards (medical, hospital, whatever) blows on administration of the services they’re supposed to deliver. it’s an endemic problem, especially considering how wealthy it makes those administrators and the market that serves them. if we focused more on delivering instead of administering, we’d be so much farther ahead.
only a little bitter, and I hate what the provincial and federal gummints/programs have done to the profession, especially here in Ontario.
October 24th, 2007 at 9:25 am
one of my passions honey ~ it is appalling how many homeless there are in this city, from the working homeless to the homeless with mental health issues, the boom here has really compounded what was already problematic and considering we are running a surplus it really punches me in the gut almost every day … sigh … healthcare needs to work with housing needs to work with mental health needs to work with education and so on ad naseum … there is definitely much to be done in our own backyards.