Partners in Health; disease spread in the world

By Katie Matteson
Western Herald

What do malnutrition, Tuberculosis, HIV and early death have in common?

The poor cannot seem to escape them.

On Tuesday, WMU held a presentation “Partners in Health: Accompaniment in Action”, in which Donna Barry argued that lack of money leads to higher illness rates.

“You cannot disconnect socio-economic issues from disease spread,” Barry said.

Donna Barry is a nurse practitioner and the Advocacy and Policy Director of Partners in Health (PIH).  PIH is an organization dedicated to bringing health care to the poor in developing countries.

Their mission is to bring supplies, facilities, and staff in order to nurse the sick back to health, but also to teach and educate residents to do the same.

“We can’t solve these problems cheaply, but we know how to solve them,” Barry said.

She described the situation of people in developing countries as a “vicious cycle”.  If they get an infection, but never get proper health care, then their body will be more susceptible to the next illness until their immune system is rundown.

“There are incredible obstacles people have to overcome to get good health care,” Barry said.

One of these obstacles included walking miles and miles through the mountains and crossing flooded rivers while pregnant in order to give birth at the clinic.

Barry said although PIH is helping, they haven’t made any real progress.  HIV, malnutrition and the amount of neonatal deaths have not changed.

“We need better technology,” Barry said.  “Without it, we will make barely any dents.”

In fact, Barry said in 1974, 500 million people were starving.  Today, 1 billion people are going hungry.

“Not only in almost 35 years did we not eradicate hunger; we’ve doubled it- clearly we aren’t doing a good job.”

She also said the risk of a woman dying in child birth in Sweden is 1 in 30,000.  But the risk of this happening in Afghanistan is 1 in 6.

“While we know health care can’t solve all the problems, it’s a piece of the puzzle.”

Barry said PIH tries to work with the residents of these countries in order to not just give them health care, but weave it into their system of life.

She said things will continue to be bad once they leave if they don’t address the socio-economic factor too and try to change the way health care is distributed.

“Luxury for most people isn’t about cars and banquets; it’s about access to clean water and food.”

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