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Life or Debt Education Pack

Debt and Health

Mother and Child

Gardi lives in the Southern Province of Ethiopia. She is seventeen years old and is expecting her first baby.

All through her life Gardi has had a very poor diet. Now she must find nourishment for herself and her growing foetus. She is a little anaemic due to the anaemia causing parasites that abound in the only water source for her village.

Gardi has no access to or knowledge of antenatal care. No such service is available nearby. Were it available, she has no money to pay the required fee. Gardi's labour will take place at home. Her anaemia poses a great risk to her life. If her baby is wrongly positioned for birth or if there is a delay in labour, Gardi has no assistance. Both she and her child could be lost at this stage.

If Gardi delivers a healthy baby, there will be no baby doctor, no vaccination and perhaps little in the way of breast milk. Her child will be in danger each day from infection, diarrhoea, measles or malaria, all treatable conditions. One in five children in her community die before their fifth birthday.

Like so many other women who live in poverty, Gardi may have several children in quick succession. Apart from the strain on Gardi's health, each child will lose access to breast milk at an early stage in its life. The risk of malnutrition is high, the children may never reach their full potential and the vicious cycle of poverty will continue.

Gardi's life, and that of the other women and children in her community, are in constant danger because they lack the very basic necessities such as food, clean water, adequate housing and access to health services and information.


Compound Interest before Medicinal Compounds……

The IMF and the World Bank demand that poor countries finance health services by charging at the clinic or hospital level. For people with little or no income, such fees are impossible to pay. Sick people are dying before their relatives can scrape together enough money to pay the fees.

 

In Zambia, a mother who wishes to have her child vaccinated must buy the syringe, needle and vaccine before attending the clinic. No money, no vaccination.

A person admitted to a hospital for surgery will not be operated on until their relatives have purchased the cotton swabs, drugs and stitching materials required for the procedure. Patients have died while awaiting items as basic as cotton swabs.

"First we cut food for the patients, then we have emergency only operations. We have not paid the telephone bill. We have no ambulances." (Hospital Doctor, Zambia/British Medical Association, 1999).

Hospitals in Zambia cannot afford to buy new equipment. The most qualified staff leave the country for well paid jobs abroad.

 

HIV/AIDS

Across the world 40 million people are living with HIV/AIDS. Nearly 28 million of these people live in sub-Saharan Africa where approximately 90 per cent of all new infections occur along with 80 per cent of the deaths.

Of the 41 poorest and most heavily indebted countries in the world, 34 are in sub-Saharan Africa. The spread of HIV/AIDS can be controlled and its impact can be significantly reduced but these actions take resources. The fight against HIV/AIDS depends on strong and effective campaigns in education and health. However, in many of the poorest and worst affected countries of the world, debt repayments are taking vital resources away from both of these sectors. Millions of people remain vulnerable to the risk of infection whilst the vast majority of the world's HIV positive population have little hope of receiving treatment or support.

The director of the United Nations agency UN AIDS, Peter Piot, made clear the connection between the debt crisis and the spread of HIV/AIDS in the most heavily indebted poor countries. Speaking at a conference on AIDS in South Africa in 2000, Mr Piot cited the need for debt cancellation to free up resources to combat the spread of HIV/AIDS, especially in sub-Saharan Africa.

"The magnitude of the HIV/AIDS epidemic on the African continent has exceeded our grimmest fears"

So said the President of the United Nations General Assembly, Theo-Ben Gurirab at the World AIDS Day symposium on the theme of children, in December 1999. Uganda is home to the largest population of AIDS orphans in the world. 1.7 million children have lost one or both parents to AIDS. Mr Gurirab went on the stress that the AIDS pandemic is depriving children of their parents and future on a scale never witnessed in human history.

The World Bank estimates that AIDS will kill 15,000 teachers in Tanzania by the year 2010. In Zimbabwe half of all hospital patients have HIV or AIDS symptoms. By 2005 Ethiopia will be spending more that a third of its total health budget on treating AIDS.

In Zambia, 20 per cent of the population is now HIV positive. The country needs to spend $25 on each person annually on healthcare; however at the moment it is spending less that $3 per person per year.

Malawi is a heavily indebted poor country with 14 per cent of its population testing positive for HIV. In August 2000, Malawi turned down a loan of $40 million from the World Bank. The loan was for AIDS treatment and prevention, but the deputy Prime Minister of Malawi said that it would be immoral for such a heavily indebted country to accept another loan that it really had no hope of repaying. If his country were to have a chance to fight AIDS they would need a grant and not another loan.

Read More about HIV / AIDS here


Health….a right denied

Health in the developing world is not about expensive drugs and state of the art surgery. The heavily indebted poor countries spend on average, about 20 per cent of their national budgets on debt service Every year millions of lives could be saved and much pain could be spared if the heavily indebted poor countries were given the freedom to redirect debt repayments into funding basic health care and education.

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