TB or not TB

Categories: uncategorized

Date: 08 February 2006 22:23:45

We've just arrived home from an evening learning about the benefits of TB. Thankfully we're lucky enough to have Sky TB, which is great for films & sport.

Mmmmmm........

FW has just advised me that I'm getting confused again and mistaking TB for TV. Now it makes more sense. I thought there was a lack sport and films.

Its hard to believe that something that we managed to eradicate here has been neglected elsewhere. There are 9 million people suffering throughout Africa, the Middle East and Asia. It even kills more people than Aids or even FW's cooking ;-)

The one common link to most forms of Third World suffering is the effect of poverty. The eradication of this would assist in slowing the effects of disease and starvation.

Having just finished reading The Shackled Continent I get the impression that a theme is emerging in the way I comprehend the Third, or Emerging, World. The fault doesn't just lie with the colonial past but also the willingness of the Developed World to ignore the suffering elsewhere.

Yet we also need to remember that we need to introduce the other things that they lack. Good government and effective ways to help them out of poverty. What Africans, Arabs and Asians that I've met through work want is the same as us. Education, good jobs, healthcare and the opportunity for their children to move further up the prosperity ladder.

Remember that our own grandparents and parents suffered from TB and other diseases that we no longer see. In 60-70 years we have progressed so far but forgotten where we started from. We could help others to recover, or prevent the same diseases, but would prefer to teach them to privatise their water networks or airports.

There's little money in uneducated workers and peasents for Western companies and governments. They're ineligble to vote in our elections.