Assignment # 2

Before reading this chapter I had never fully contemplated the amount of overlooked health benefits that I take as given living in The U.S.  These seemingly standard benefits such as having clean water in my house do not exist for the poor in developing countries.  I place my health in the hands of my doctor and trust that he is going to do what is right for me.  On the other hand, the poor have to add clean water, child immunization, and many other things that don’t pose a problem to the typical American to their already enormous list of tribulations in their daily lives. 

Similar to the discussions about nutrition as a hindrance to the economic improvement of the poor in the previous chapter, the authors identify disease and sickness as a major reason for cyclical poverty in developing countries and attempt to give an understanding of why they cant escape this cycle. The authors argue that the choices the poor make to spend their money on quick cures to diseases and sicknesses rather than to invest in prevention keeps them locked in poverty.  They also attribute this problem to that of under qualified doctors in the health care system that services the poor.   The authors show that things such faulty belief systems and procrastination keep the poor from getting immunized which is vital to their health.

One of the statistics that I found most interesting was in the section about how doctors in developing countries tend to under diagnose and overmedicate their patients.  The authors introduce certain statistics when talking about the low qualifications of public and private doctors in developing countries and how ineffective they are at helping their patients.  After this broader theme is introduced they then jump into the specifics of the doctor visits, “In our health survey in Udaipur, we found that a patient was given a shot in 66 percent of the visits to a private facility and a drip in 12 percent of the visits. A test is performed in only 3 percent of the visits.”

From this statistic they go on to hypothesize that the there is a problem with the public health system and the qualifications of the doctors that service the poor.  Instead of taking the proper steps to help their patients prevent illness in the future, doctors are instead looking for easy solutions such as antibiotics and steroids that hurt their patients’ immune system in the long run. 

While I completely agree that the under qualification of doctors in poor countries is a major issue, I wonder whether there other factors that cause doctors to overmedicate?  Could it be that the poor themselves understand the importance of preemptive steps but still demand quick solutions to their illnesses instead? Or, possibly the system is so over taxed that health care providers are constantly in the position of reacting to the serious illness that stand before them and they have little time for education and prevention. 

These questions go to the heart of the section of the reading about procrastination.  The poor probably understand that they should be getting immunized but often are too busy or just can’t find the time to actually get it done.  Every year when it comes time for flu season, I dread going and getting my free flu shot.  Even though I understand the benefits that I will receive from getting the shot, I often end up procrastinating and getting it at the last minute.  According to the CDC (The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention),“Last flu season, about 130.9 million Americans, or 43 percent of the U.S. population, received a flu shot.”  Assuming that it is not a lack of understanding about immunization, shouldn’t the U.S. as a first world country be 100% vaccinated?

So maybe the poor are not as unaware of preventative medicine as the authors make it seem.  Maybe the poor weigh the risks of forgoing leisure time or time that could be spent working against possible discomfort associated with catching the disease and make a rational decision not to act.  It may not seem rational to us to forgo disease prevention in the West.  But maybe in developing countries where the poor are forced to deal with all of the problems that are already solved for us they simply cannot find the time to take all of the steps to improve their health.