I found this article on the NY times website. The title of the article was "HIV/AIDS one of the Top 10 Crises of the Year." It was written by the Associated Press on December 21, 2009. The link for this website is : http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2009/12/21/us/AP-US-US-Humanitarian-Crises-Top-10.html?scp=4&sq=HIV&st=cse. The article is about third world countries, and does not talk about the diseases in the US. It does however talk about how the US is not helping with aid and money in order to reduce the number of deaths in these countries.
The article starts by talking about the decrease in funding for the HIV/AIDS research which is similar to what Eric's article was about. My article then goes on to focus a lot about two organizations, Doctors without Borders and MSF (Medecins Sans Frontieres) which is the international humanitarian organization run by the executive director, Sophie Delaunay, of Doctors without Borders in France. Both organizations are focusing on bettering the lives of others in third world countries. However they are having a lot of trouble due to the fact that the countries and their governments are resisting their help such as; Sri Lanka, Pakinstan and Sudan. While other countries; Yemen, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Democratic Republic of the Congo, and Somalia, are not gaining enough funding for diseases and malnutrition in their countries. Sophie Delaunay talked about how HIV/AIDS needed to have the continued funding because, "HIV/AIDS is an emergency" and the US and other world powers that are able to give money to help people in developing countries survive need to be aware of the urgency and the need for the money. In the article the author described many examples of how the governments in the other countries are making the process of helping the countries harder than it has to be. In Sri Lanka the government banned aid in their conflict zones. While in Somalia, Democratic Republic of the Congo and Yemen, the countries are in the midst of fighting and violence. The clinics set up by the MSF are in the middle of the fighting and are also acting as shelter and safety. Pakistan's clinic was even set on fire which shut it down. Also on the 10 Crises of the Year list were, Chagas, leishmaniasis, sleeping sickness and the Buruli ulcer. AIDs and malnutrition were also on the list. Malnutrition, many times being over looked as a killer of many people in developing countries. There is some bias in this article. First off it only voices the views of doctors in America and France (MSF). However it never mentions the what the people in the developing nations feel or how the doctors in these nations are reacting to MSF and Doctors without Borders. Also the article is really only one sided argument. It constantly talks about how the funding for AIDs can not end and must increase, but also that there are other diseases in the developing countries that are also very deadly. There is really only one way that MSF and Doctors without Borders see a solution, which is more funding. They do not see that many nations can not afford it or that maybe the developing nations want to fend for themselves and not take the help of a larger power than them.
My personal reaction to the article is that I think this really expands what I think about as the threatening diseases in the world. In the United States we are some what obsessed with the spread of Swine Flu, while in other countries, such as Yemen, they are dealing with diseases that we have medicine for to make it less deadly. I think the United States has to start aiding other countries more because we are very fortunate to have all these new scientific drugs and prescriptions while they are not nearly as medically advanced as us. However I think it is not only the funding that needs to increase. I think the governments of third world countries need to start allowing and protecting clinics and doctors that have come to help them. These doctors are vital to their countries survival and some of these countries seem like they don't even care about the help they are receiving. Basically in the end it takes cooperation between the two. The larger, more wealthy countries need to give more aid, while the developing countries need to accept it.
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ReplyDeleteI think this artice was very good. The best part is that the people who are runnig it are all mostly voulenteers. and unless you are from tennesse voulenters are very hard to come by now a days(doctors with out boarders). Giving vacines and anti-biotics will prove to be life saving to many. But one question, who gets it first and who even gets it at all?
ReplyDeleteI think this article makes a very good point about how the US is so focused on the Swine Flu problems that it is directing our attention away from "emergencies" such as HIV/AIDS. Yes, the Swine Flu has gotten much media for being "deadly", but really it is only as harmful as the regular flu unless it forms into another illness such as pneumonia. As the article suggests we should focus most of our attention on helping the third world countries.
ReplyDeleteI agree with Erin about this article. I also think that Americans as well as people from more developed, more fortunate countries should take some of their concern about swine flu and put it towards helping out other third world nations with the many deadly diseases that they are facing. Reading this article reminded me of the hand outthat we recieved in the beginning of the year that had boxes on it which were sized based on how many deaths different diseases have caused recently around the world. On the sheet, swine flu was extremely small if Iremember correctly. This article shows that people should take their focus off swine flu and put it towards other global epidemics.
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