GUEST COLUMN
Information Exchange
Meet Our Featured Guest Columnist:
Dr. Roger Glass
Dr. Roger Glass is director of the Fogarty International Center at the National Institutes of Health.
A: First, from a moral standpoint, as citizens of the wealthiest country in the world, we have a responsibility to share our scientific knowledge and medical advances to benefit those less fortunate than ourselves. Second, in this increasingly "flat" world, health issues impact us all. The recent outbreak of SARS and the ongoing bird flu epidemic in Asian poultry both show that diseases don't respect borders. Globalization has increased the movement of people and products around the world, which means diseases can spread more quickly. Finally, Americans benefit enormously from research that has taken place elsewhere. Many parents rely on products such as Pedialyte when their children have diarrhea. This kind of oral rehydration therapy was originally developed by scientists working in Bangladesh who wanted to learn to treat cholera, which can kill quickly.
Meet Our Featured Guest Columnist:
Victor Cid
Victor Cid is a senior computer scientist at the Disaster Information Research Center of the National Library of Medicine.
A: The understanding that open opportunities to live a healthy life and access to health care are fundamental rights. Unobstructed access to humanity's best health information is a powerful enabling tool.
Meet Our Featured Guest Columnist:
Julia Royall
Julia Royall is chief of international programs at the National Library of Medicine. As director of the Multilateral Initiative on Malaria (MIM) Communications Network she led an initiative to launch fast and reliable Internet connectivity all across Africa, to provide access to current medical literature.
A: Earlier this week, I was passing by an IDP (Internally Displaced Persons) camp in Gulu in the North of Uganda, an area that has been torn by war for the last 20 years. Out from the huts, built close together and seeming to stretch on forever, ran a small child, coming to the roadside to watch the vehicles passing by on the long road back to KampalA: I photographed her so she was captured in time, but her image continued to play over and over again in my mind in full motion. What rights does this child have? How will she have a future beyond "feedings" by USAID? How will she receive health care? Be educated? Be able to think and move beyond the camp--where she was born and all she has known. Through my particular spectacles, I see good health as critical to this little girl being able to feed, clothe, and shelter herself. If she is not healthy, she cannot go to school or work or envision anything beyond the limitations of the camp. Is not good health the bedrock on which one can build a better life? A better world? But back to Gulu: No matter what else she makes of life, should not she at least have a spot on the playing field?
Meet Our Featured Guest Columnist: Janet Collier
Janet Collier is a history teacher at Charles E. Smith Jewish Day School in Rockville, Maryland. Each year, she holds the Global Health Conference for everyone in the seventh grade. Students work with teachers to research and create exhibits about the health needs of different countries. They display their finished projects, on topics from HIV/AIDS to hospital funding, at a special event for parents and the rest of the school, where they answer questions and talk about what they have learned.
A: It is important that we take personal responsibility for our health, but we cannot, as single individuals, ensure that we have safe drinking water and enough healthy and affordable food to eat, that the infrastructure around us is safely constructed, that we will not be exposed to disease or develop cancer, or that we will never be the victim of an accident, not to mention being unable to take care of ourselves due to either our youth or our age. It is in everyone's interest that the people on this planet be as healthy as they can be and receive the care they need when they aren't. The more people who can fully participate in their families, their communities, their countries, and the world, and the more people who are able to realize their full potential, the better off everyone will be. The world more than ever is a collaborative project, and the more people who can contribute their work and their ideas, the more likely we are to find solutions to our many challenges. Furthermore, how can you justify agreeing to, implicitly, the pain and suffering of innocent people due to malnutrition, disease, and injury?