Don’t we all wish that good health was as common as grains of sand? Sadly, it isn’t the reality, particularly for those residing in lower and middle-income countries. On their table lies a cruel banquet of issues – limited access to essential medicines, a rampant growth of low-quality or fake medications, and the resulting havoc on health and wellbeing. Let’s delve into the seven core issues involved in this crisis.
1. The Grim Reality: Lack of Access to Essential Medicines
In a perfect world, everyone would have seamless access to essential medicines. Albeit, the world we inhabit is far from ideal – approximately 2 billion people don’t have access to these necessary remedies.
2. The Underlying Issue: Low-Income & Middle-Income Countries Bear the Brunt
No, this crisis isn’t impartial. Its cruel eyes predominantly watch lower and middle-income countries, making healthcare a luxury instead of a basic right in these regions.
3. The Knock-off Pandemic: Surge of Counterfeit Drugs
Filling up the gap in the medicine landscape aren’t high-quality drugs but their shady cousins – fake or low-quality ones. This flood of counterfeits multiplies the health risks exponentially.
4. The Death Dealers: Counterfeit Drugs Prove Lethal
It is not just about ineffective treatment. The true horror stems from these counterfeit drugs proving lethal, snatching away lives needlessly.
5. The Unexpected Victims: Treatable Diseases Becoming Fatal
The domino effect of this crisis is alarming. Diseases that would be mere bumps on the road in high-income countries turn into tumultuous mountains, causing distress and unwarranted death.
6. The Irony of Availability: Non-Existence of Alternatives
Where there is a void, there must be alternatives to fill it, right? Wrong. The troubling part is that this is not just about short supply but about the near non-existence of viable alternatives. The dependency is entirely upon less-than-reliable sources, creating a breeding ground for health disasters.
7. The Needless Suffering: Preventable Diseases Leading to Death
Potentially the most heart-rending facet of this crisis is that the struggle and death it causes are often needless. Many of these illnesses are preventable ones, turning fatal only due to insufficient medicinal aid.
The stakes are high, and the problem at hand is monstrous. Shedding light on this crisis is the first step, but much more needs to be done globally to overcome this health catastrophe. Until then, the notion of ‘Health for All’ remains just a distant, cruel irony for many.
Credit: BBC. TechCrunch, Reuters
