Providing Medicine for the Poor. the Case of River Blindness.

Providing Medicine for the Poor. The case of River Blindness.

Africa is the continent where there are many diseases and even epidemics. The reason for their occurrence is usually poverty, hunger or a small awareness of health-related population. Moreover, poor hygiene, lack of clean drinking water, poor nutrition, lack of funds for prevention, drugs and therapeutics. Infectious diseases are caused by pathogenic microorganisms, such as bacteria, viruses, parasites or fungi; the diseases can be spread, directly or indirectly, from one person to another. Zoonotic diseases are infectious diseases of animals that can cause disease when transmitted to humans.

* Over 10m of deaths were children, 99% of whom came from developing countries;

* Over 50% of child deaths were due to respiratory infections, diarrhea, malaria, HIV/AIDS (the last three explain most child deaths in Africa);

* Among the major global diseases are: HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis, malaria and diarrhea (i.e. adults are affected by the same diseases);

* HIV/AIDS and tuberculosis are closely related. Over 70% of HIV positive South Africans are also infected with tuberculosis;

* The disease burden per person in Sub-Saharan Africa increased between 1990 and 2001, mostly because of HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria;

* Every year there are 9 million new cases of tuberculosis, and 1.6m deaths due to this.

* Malnutrition remains one of the main causes of diseases in Africa.

Is Africa a place of diseases?

Why?

Almost half of the population in Africa suffers from water-related diseases. On top of insufficient hygiene education, the frequent inundations (and lack of risk prevention) play an important role: in Mozambique over 1 million people were displaced by the floods of 1999/2000 and an unknown number killed.

Diseases in Africa – and in particular HIV-AIDS and other infectious diseases and viral infections – are another major threat to economic development.

In Africa lack of...