by Alexandre Carvalho
Kate! Reynolds!
It was great to hear from you, to know a little more about your story, and observe that you too are a passionate one. It's through passion that one can measure the size of the human spirit, not through grades or Gross Domestic Product. But this is another discussion! I wish you good luck in Indonesia, a place where HIV is hitting hard. Please send me info about what you're doing. I'd like to follow.
Attached in this, is the Pew report. The Kaiser family and the Pew foundation made this report on the views of people worldwide concerning health issues. HIV, TB, Malaria, Healthcare costs and difficulties to afford them, it's all there. Also, they make some interesting comparisons and draw some curious conclusions that maybe worth to take a peep. Some back that interesting historical perspective Joshua pointed out; some show that we still have a lot to do until avoidable deaths (tragedies, in my view) could be completely stopped from happening. A huge report, I know, but if you read the first pages, it sums it all! The rest is just methodology and the actual responses people in each country gave.
Free Health care in a profit-oriented economy is a great challenge. Some countries that have experience on this - Brazil, yeah! - still have miles and miles to go. The public health system in Rio de Janeiro, for instance, has an "endemic" infra-structure problem. We lack meds, we lack exams, we even lack doctors and nurses. But is it because it's free? Is it because we have no market forces to drive it forward? No competition? Or is it corruption, bad political decisions, a passive culture that yelds too much? Etc etc etc...?
The Scandinavian countries, that have free health care systems, have a MUCH BETTER AND WORKING SYSTEM. It's not perfect, but no system is. Looking at their example, we observe that it goes beyond mere economics.
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