The accounting of the pharmaceutical industry can not keep up, adding orders for antiviral and calculating the benefits in their coffers will finally called the Influenza A. And governments are trying to reassure the public by publishing the quantities of drugs they cherish in their stores. Roche Laboratories need not make any investment in advertising to sell massively famous Tamiflu, as noted by the world press as the main action against the dreaded disease, while speculating about hypothetical scenarios virus mutations drawing frightening invite a massive ‘purchase preventive’ magic dust against the pandemic.
Meanwhile, quietly in the corners of the planet’s poorest billion people continue to die because of harms that nobody has ever put too much interest in fighting: Hunger and its consequences, lack of water, lack of salts, lack of minimum health facilities … Because injustice in the distribution of wealth remains the leading cause of death worldwide. And extreme poverty is pandemic-the breeding ground for diseases, more deadly.
Doctors Without Borders says that every 30 seconds a child dies of malaria. ie 2 per minute, 120 per hour, day 2880, more than one million children each year. Who cares? Dengue is another miserable disease with tremendous numbers of deaths: two million victims annually. The list of most serious and damaging conditions that the new influenza A would be too long for this blog. But these two examples suffice. His figures, as its effects-not stand comparison with those of the dreaded pandemic. But are diseases endemic to the south, which penalize the sunken areas in poverty, the powerful pharmaceutical corporations regard as ‘potential customers’. And devote the necessary resources for drug research and / or effective vaccines would not be a profitable investment.
If Influenza A is spread by the most impoverished regions of Africa, Latin America and Asia, no one will buy billions of doses of antiviral drugs needed to combat it.
The pandemic favors poverty: overcrowding and promiscuity, lack of water and lack of basic hygiene, facilitate transmission. Malnutrition, chronic weakness, the existence of many other diseases, AIDS, tuberculosis, malaria, etc.-multiplies its effects on vulnerable and disadvantaged populations. Finally, poor health infrastructure, if not its complete absence, makes it difficult if not impossible adequate medical intervention.
Will soon come south for the winter of America: the flu season this year is a greater threat. But more afraid to be taken into other areas who do not know but winters of extreme poverty: in Nicaragua have antiviral treatments for about three thousand people, while 60 per 100 of the population lacks safe drinking water. And while Argentina has announced that 600,000 doses of appropriate drugs, the World Health Organization acknowledges that it has only a million treatments for Africa as a whole.
The figures are there: a tangle of figures used to calculate the number of possible affected, assess the availability of drugs stored, discuss and establish budgets … Does anyone know the estimates of benefits these days handle boards of pharmaceutical corporations ? Let no one expect a gesture of solidarity as ruthless transnational industry.
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