More US policy effects on AIDS
The Post has a decentarticle today about the combination of AIDS and TB treatment in South Africa. One bit that caught my eye:
A combination of political pressure and increased production of generic drugs has led to a dramatic decrease in the price of antiretrovirals. But treating AIDS on a mass scale in South Africa, where estimates of HIV infections exceed 5 million, has proven far more complicated than just providing medicine.
There are not nearly enough doctors, nurses or pharmacists to prescribe and distribute the drugs.
In the AIDS advocacy community, we often focus on how US policy affects the fight against the disease abroad (very detrimentally of late, it seems). The issues activists are usually most concerned about revolve around intellectual property and pharmaceuticals, debt cancellation, abstinence-only restrictions on prevention money, and the dollar amount of direct aid. What often gets left out of the picture, because it is not so apparently a US government problem, is the shortage of medical personnel in much of the global south. This too, however, is related to problems in this country and its approach to medicine.
We treat nurses very poorly. Despite offering more pay and benefits than ever before, many americans are still driven from the job by the overwhelming workload expected for what is still inadequate compensation, and a medical culture that does not properly respect nurses relative to doctors. It is a patronizing, elitist social order that harkens back to days of aristocracy and sexism, and needs to be restructured. As critical as nurses are to medical care, it's a wonder that things haven't yet reformed. The result of complacency in the face of such deep-seated problems is that fewer and fewer Americans choose to become nurses.
Enter immigrants. Enticed by huge pay differentials and bonuses relative to their native country's ability to compensate them, foreign nurses and nursing students travel in large numbers to fill the increasing shortage stateside (this kind of move is often used when American management finds difficulty in continuing to exploit the local labor pool). This leaves shortages in their home countries, which in turn leads to deficient health infrastructure incapable of dealing with AIDS, TB and other epidemics.
It is important to place the blame where it ought to lie - not only with the outdated, oppressive culture of American medicine, but also with our failure to implement a humane and universal health care system. The shortage of nurses in this country ought to be viewed as a national crisis that our government needs to address, not a problem of private business that can be solved by hiring mercenaries at the expense of poor nations. I believe that a public health care system could confer the sense dignity and importance onto nursing that it so deserves. But whatever the solution to our crisis, we need to make it globally sustainable, and not rob our neighbors of medical personnel they so dearly need.
A combination of political pressure and increased production of generic drugs has led to a dramatic decrease in the price of antiretrovirals. But treating AIDS on a mass scale in South Africa, where estimates of HIV infections exceed 5 million, has proven far more complicated than just providing medicine.
There are not nearly enough doctors, nurses or pharmacists to prescribe and distribute the drugs.
In the AIDS advocacy community, we often focus on how US policy affects the fight against the disease abroad (very detrimentally of late, it seems). The issues activists are usually most concerned about revolve around intellectual property and pharmaceuticals, debt cancellation, abstinence-only restrictions on prevention money, and the dollar amount of direct aid. What often gets left out of the picture, because it is not so apparently a US government problem, is the shortage of medical personnel in much of the global south. This too, however, is related to problems in this country and its approach to medicine.
We treat nurses very poorly. Despite offering more pay and benefits than ever before, many americans are still driven from the job by the overwhelming workload expected for what is still inadequate compensation, and a medical culture that does not properly respect nurses relative to doctors. It is a patronizing, elitist social order that harkens back to days of aristocracy and sexism, and needs to be restructured. As critical as nurses are to medical care, it's a wonder that things haven't yet reformed. The result of complacency in the face of such deep-seated problems is that fewer and fewer Americans choose to become nurses.
Enter immigrants. Enticed by huge pay differentials and bonuses relative to their native country's ability to compensate them, foreign nurses and nursing students travel in large numbers to fill the increasing shortage stateside (this kind of move is often used when American management finds difficulty in continuing to exploit the local labor pool). This leaves shortages in their home countries, which in turn leads to deficient health infrastructure incapable of dealing with AIDS, TB and other epidemics.
It is important to place the blame where it ought to lie - not only with the outdated, oppressive culture of American medicine, but also with our failure to implement a humane and universal health care system. The shortage of nurses in this country ought to be viewed as a national crisis that our government needs to address, not a problem of private business that can be solved by hiring mercenaries at the expense of poor nations. I believe that a public health care system could confer the sense dignity and importance onto nursing that it so deserves. But whatever the solution to our crisis, we need to make it globally sustainable, and not rob our neighbors of medical personnel they so dearly need.
posted by onlooker at 10:22 AM
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