WORLD HEALTH
Over 20 years ago the campaign ³Polio 2000² was launched, the aim was to eradicate all childhood diseases through a worldwide vaccination programme by the year 2000.
I was not very enthusiastic about it as the real health issues were being avoided, clean water, adequate nutrition, shelter, hygiene, a fair trade system and other economic measures to permit developing nations to be self reliant. I felt this programme made us in the West feel were doing something valuable but evading the tougher problems.
Little has changed in the intervening years, the worthy aspirations have not been achieved.
To-day 90% of the worldıs population cannot afford the modern medical paradigm and, by necessity, has to rely on its own resources , its indigenous medicine and community and family support.
A beacon of hope was lit in ( GIFTS) a health initiative which acknowleges the real situation and tries to help governments build on what they already have.18
The developed world must by now realise there are no national frontiers to disease, and social & economic suffering, nor can these inequalities be ignored any longer.