I support the idea of providing free medical services to children under 5. However, my concern is, do children die because parents don't have money to settle the hospital bills or due to lack of better medical services at hospitals PLUS parents not been able to recognize danger signs at home?
Frank
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Frank Komakoma
Pharmacist-Tanzania
mailto:fkoma@yahoo.com
I'd like to through another idea in there that I've been thinking about for some time. I am not sure children die for any of the reasons we think, but because parents are so used to children under 5 dieing as they have for hundreds of years that they do not invest as much in food and resources as they expect there to be many deaths before 5 and if they live to age 5, they begin that investment as they expect them to live to adulthood and to support their parents when the parents are old.
Best regards,
Sandra
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Sandra Basgall
Regional Technical Adviser for Monitoring and Evaluation
Central Africa Regional Office
12 bis Av. Nyembo, Q. Socimat
Kinshasa, Democratic Republic of Congo
MAIL ADDRESS:
228 West Lexington Street
Baltimore, MD 21201-3413
Tel: +243-819-505-911
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VOIP: 5035
SKYPE: sbasgall
www.crs.org
mailto:sandra.basgall@gmail.com
mailto:sbasgall@caro.crs.org
In my view: it is a multiple cause result: parents ignorance, money and accessibility and African rural way of dealing with life. First line treatment are family and friends that experimented similar disease, than traditional healers than finally decision taken, collect money, find transport, have access to the right HF.
Giuseppe Chio
mailto:africaforever@yahoo.com
I am happy that you raised this issue because in many developing countries, like Nigeria, donor agency funded drugs are managed by non pharmacists, at both private sectors and primary health centres. Drugs and other health commodities are easily accessible in the open market without restrictions, so they fall into the hands of untrained persons who cajole the unsuspecting and uninformed mothers into seeking healthcare from them, so even with the availability of the drugs etc, there is widespread misuse with consequent treatment failure.
The presence of NGOs also weaken the formal health sector because the NGOs offer more attractive remuneration, and even in hospitals where they exist alongside the formal health services, the government employees prefer to work there. In majority of the secondary and tertiary hospitals in Nigeria where HIV/AIDs counselling and treatment pharmacies exist, they are so well furnished and equipped that every Pharmacist in the hospital would prefer to work their, thereby downplaying on the poorly equipped government pharmacy within the same hospital, PLEASE IS THIS STRENGTHENING OR WEAKENING?
Ukamaka
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Ukamaka Okafor
mailto:chinaemelum9291@yahoo.com