Medpundit

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Monday, May 05, 2003

Public Health Militancy: Last week the New York Times ran an interesting graphic on its editorial page that showed the relative incidence of deaths from various diseases around the world. SARS occupied a tiny portion when compared to diseases like tuberculosis. (Unfortunately they didn’t make it available on the internet. Probably took up too much bandwith.) It illicited this response from one reader:

Howard Markel and Stephen Doyle present the real problem. The diseases enumerated demonstrate that our focus should be on public health, saving countless more lives than all the regime changes in the world.

Ah, but here’s the rub. Those diseases, like tuberculosis and HIV, are killing people in large numbers in nations with chaotic governments. Nations where the leaders live well and the people live miserably. (see the post below re: life expectancy) Nations where leaders starve their people for political reasons. You can hardly expect those governments to embrace public health measures to cut infectious disease. Which means that if those diseases are to really be eliminated, it would take a regime change.

posted by Sydney on 5/05/2003 08:00:00 AM 0 comments

Monday, May 05, 2003

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