Wednesday, December 1, 2010
HealthRight in the New Yorker on the Right to Health
In the December 6, 2010 edition of the New Yorker magazine, Michael Specter (“A Deadly Misdiagnosis”) paints a bleak picture of how hard it is to diagnose and treat tuberculosis in resource-poor environments like India.
Unfortunately, TB is a health problem closely associated with poverty and both social and economic marginalization. Those who are most vulnerable are least likely to get good care.
As the article described, poor people are even less likely to get acceptable, accessible, good quality care because of the distortions caused in India and elsewhere when an underfunded public health system is undermined by unaffordable or poor quality private care. Even an honest private sector generally only offers solutions unobtainable by the world’s poor, such as the new diagnostic machine for TB described in the article, which at $25,000 costs almost as much as the total annual budget for one rural clinic in Kenya where HealthRight trained clinicians to better diagnose and treat infectious diseases like HIV/AIDS and TB.
HealthRight responded to the article by asserting that everyone is guaranteed the right to health: “a standard of living adequate for the health and well-being of himself and of his family, including…medical care.”
Please read the response in its entirety below:
Michael Specter describes the way that sketchy private clinics in India are preying on people at risk of tuberculosis, and simultaneously undermining an under-resourced public-health system (“A Deadly Misdiagnosis,” November 15th). When public and private health-care systems compete, poor people are often the victims, caught between lousy care and unaffordable care. We see this in Vietnam and in Russia—anywhere that a government is unable to devote sufficient resources to the public-health system, or unwilling to regulate a private one. Unfortunately, in countries such as these, diseases like TB will continue to spread until they reach populations rich enough to afford good treatment. According to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, everyone has the right to health and well-being, which includes medical care. As Specter’s article illustrates, letting only the principles of the market shape health care in poorer countries means that most people will be denied that right.
Mila Rosenthal
Executive Director
HealthRight International
New York City