Come on pharmaceutical companies!

I am sure if you have been watching the world news or reading the paper you are aware of the worsening conditions in Haiti.  The cholera epidemic in is spreading across the impoverished country like wildfire, and will surely be spreading to other Caribbean countries in no time.  This already poor country was ravished by natural disaster, and now faces a terrifying epidemic that has already killed more than a thousand and has no signs of slowing.  How cholera is spread, what are we doing to prevent it, and why there isn’t enough vaccine?

Cholera is a disease caused by bacteria that affects the intestines.   It causes dehydration, diarrhea, vomiting, and in one out of 20 cases, according to MedicineNet.com, death.  This disease is most commonly found in areas with poor water filtration and third world food standards.  It is spread when feces from an infected person contaminates the food or water supply.  In a country like Haiti with the conditions they are currently under it is no surprise that the disease is running amok.  Haiti’s water conditions were terrible before the hurricanes and earthquake hit.  Now they are unimaginable.   The relief efforts are a raindrop in the ocean of what really needs to be happening.

The WHO, world health organization, is making small strides to put an end to the epidemic by gathering all of the available vaccine for approval and shipment.  The only trouble here is that there is only enough vaccine to vaccinate 250,000 people.  The population of Haiti alone is just under 10 million.  If it becomes more than just Haiti’s problem, which it certainly could, we would have no vaccine to inoculate anybody.  Which leads us to wonder, why isn’t there enough vaccine?

In an article on NPR’s website, they bring up the valid issue of money.  Why would a for-profit drug company create mass amounts of a drug which prevents a disease that only affects that world’s poorest and underdeveloped corners?  Their goal is to make money not save lives right?  This is a scary thought.  I am certain there are more than 250,000 doses of morphine available, but not enough to stop an epidemic that kills more than 100,000 people a year that could be entirely prevented altogether with vaccination. 

I know money plays a factor and the drug is not free to make, but I think the drug companies make enough money off of people that they could do something for the benefit of the human race as a whole.  I wait tables at a restaurant and most nights of the week you could find a drug company buttering up some doctors and giving a presentation of their newest greatest drug.  In my estimations if they had a soul they would forgo those dinners for some humanitarian effort.  If one company stopped having those presentations alone in one month on average they could have saved 700 lives.  That is only one presentation dinner a week for a month.  Four dinners to save 700 lives, I bet that would make any doctor lose his appetite.