So, I’m home again, and having neglected this blog for the second half of my trip (sorry) I have decided to start it up again. With a different twist.
Today was my first day of my new degree – a graduate diploma of International Public Health. What is this?? apart from a really long title… well, the international bit means that we study low to middle income countries, which can be anywhere really from Africa, South America, Eastern Europe, Asia (except South Korea, Japan, etc), Sub-continental Asia (ie India, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, etc). And “public health” is mostly about health on a population level. For example, you might be looking at a particular disease (HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis, malaria) and implementing programs to combat that disease in a country or community.
The point, is that I think there are some really interesting facts and discussions that come up in international public health that are important for Christians to know and be thinking about. So, if you’re not interested in our brothers and sisters in poorer countries, then still read, cos this might help you become interested!! and if you are read and comment – it’s important to discuss these things!!
Today I learnt that in Malawi there is one doctor for every 91,000 people who live there. In Australia there is 1 doctor per 400 residents. The WHO’s position is:
“Every woman, man, youth and child has the human right to the highest attainable standard of physical and mental health, without discrimination of any kind. Enjoyment of the human right to health is vital to all aspects of a person’s life and well-being, and is crucial to the realization of many other fundamental human rights and freedoms.”
It’s really easy to agree with this position – yes, attaining health is a human right, no there shouldn’t be any discrimination. But there is.
It’s much less easy to do something about it. What can we do? All train as doctors and move to Malawi? It might be a start. However, truthfully there are aready some NGOs that are doing awesome work in international public health. Medicins sans frontiers, world vision and oxfam are the big three. Supporting their work (prayerfully/ financially) would also help!
In class today, we were discussing a book that suggested that a person who earns $100K should be donating $5K to the poor. This caused a great stir, “but $5000 is so much! too much!”
I suggested they should give away $50K, but it was taken as a joke. What do you think?
5 comments
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March 1, 2010 at 11:02 pm
Anthony Douglas
Gosh, I drove through the uni today but didn’t see you!
I think you should keep making such ‘jokes’. No point studying public health if people aren’t prepared to actually try to do anything about fixing it…
(Welcome back, btw – I was just about to give up on hearing more from you here!)
March 1, 2010 at 11:03 pm
Anthony Douglas
(which would have been perfectly ok – you’d finished the world tour)
(because, of course, I can hardly preach about blogging frequency…)
March 2, 2010 at 6:04 pm
merrancourtney
What were you doing at uni?
And my plans are to continue stirring the pot a bit
March 3, 2010 at 12:32 am
Anthony Douglas
I was driving through – had been at Rhodes, and was headed to have lunch with Brice in Alexandria.
All of which would not have occurred had I not wanted to visit a parishioner (of 80+, certainly) who’d just had her pacemaker put in!
Of course, she’d transferred back down here yesterday around noon. I missed her by that much
March 3, 2010 at 12:45 pm
Lucy
I agree that you should keep pushing “unrealistic” ideals. It’s the only way to permeate current “realistic” (i.e. selfish) standards. People in Australia NEED far less to live on than what we actually make, it’s just that we carried away with the possessions and dreams and aspirations and such.
Good on you for doing a degree with some depth
So proud *sniff*