Wednesday, September 12, 2007

Drugs Banned, Many of World’s Poor Suffer in Pain

Although the rainy season was coming on fast, Zainabu Sesay was in no shape to help her husband. Ditches had to be dug to protect their cassava and peanuts, and their mud hut’s palm roof was sliding off.But Mrs. Sesay was sick. She had breast cancer in a form that Western doctors rarely see anymore — the tumor had burst through her skin, looking like a putrid head of cauliflower weeping small amounts of blood at its edges.
“It bone! It booonnnne lie de fi-yuh!” she said of the pain — it burns like fire — in Krio, the blended language spoken in this country where British colonizers resettled freed slaves.
No one had directly told her yet, but there was no hope — the cancer was also in her lymph glands and ribs.
Like millions of others in the world’s poorest countries, she is destined to die in pain. She cannot get the drug she needs — one that is cheap, effective, perfectly legal for medical uses under treaties signed by virtually every country, made in large quantities, and has been around since Hippocrates praised its source, the opium poppy. She cannot get morphine.

With all the money America has, you think they would help poor countries. Its sad that we spend money on some of the useless things when some people in other countries are dying. I think its time for America to step up help since they say that we are the volunteer country.

1 comment:

Unknown said...

You need to be more specific about what the article is about and how you think the writer is trying to persuade the reader.