Dear Emory Community,
I think I can speak on behalf of many of my peers when I say how incredibly proud I am to call myself an Emory alumna right now. The global community is currently experiencing the largest Ebola outbreak in history, and Emory has handled the U.S. cases exactly how a health care provider should. From this community I have seen nothing but respect, attention to privacy and most importantly, an acknowledgement that every person has the right to health regardless of disease status. With a death toll already past 4,000 and a case fatality rate around 60 percent, this epidemic is one of the greatest public health issues we have experienced thus far during this century. Ebola's virulence in conjunction with the media's response is certainly enough to instill a great amount of fear in the average American. Regardless of the magnitude of this epidemic and the misperceptions surrounding it, there really is one major underlying cause.
The heart of this problem stems from poor health care systems. Health care providers in Guinea, Sierra Leone and Liberia have the highest risk for contracting the virus. Medical necessities are in short supply, hospitals do not have enough beds and there is fear and misunderstanding surrounding the disease in many of the affected communities. Sadly, these instances exemplify care deficiencies that have persisted in these areas for generations; in other words, these are NOT new problems. At the turn of the millennium, world leaders sought to address these challenges by creating the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), which aim to improve global health and alleviate fundamental causes of illness - such as poverty - by the year 2015. Certainly the MDGs placed global health in the mainstream consciousness. However, as 2014 draws to a close, they raise a very pertinent question: have they provided an effective framework for global health? The answer is no. World leaders still fail to allocate proper resources to all of their citizens, and citizens still fail to understand their rights to health care.
We have the opportunity to alter the status quo. On Oct. 25, people in hundreds of communities across the globe will come together for the first ever Global Day of Action for the Right to Health. Article 25 of the United Nations Declaration of Human Rights reads, "Everyone has the right to a standard of living adequate for the health and well-being of himself and his family." On Oct. 25, groups around the world will not only launch local movements to make Article 25 a reality in their communities, but they will also ignite a global movement that will pave the way for access to proper health care as a universal reality.
This movement comes at a critical moment in history. Since the UN General Assembly last month, world leaders have begun negotiations on a new set of post-2015 Sustainable Development Goals. The coming months present an opportunity to demand that world leaders make the right to health and universal health care a priority on the global stage. This commitment, made at the highest levels, would drive the respective national policy agendas over the ensuing years to finally make the right to health a reality across individual nations.
Fourteen years ago, good intentions were made through the MDGs. Yet, maternal health still suffers. People neglect hospital visits due to expensive out-of-pocket fees. Doctors and nurses in West Africa are forced to turn patients with Ebola away because they do not have the proper equipment to protect themselves. These examples demonstrate that intentions are not good enough. What good is delivering half of the truth? What good is building hospitals when there are no doctors to fill them? What good is providing medical equipment if there is no proper training? What good is creating medications that are not affordable to the people who need them most? What good is failing to address that health is a basic human right? This is global injustice, and it needs to stop. To hell with good intentions, this calls for exemplary action. This calls for a movement.
It saddens me that it takes so many deaths from a disease that should be manageable to shed light upon the gaps that exist within the current system. This is my call to action for you: on Oct. 25, join the fight to make health care accessible and affordable in every corner of the world. Ignite a movement for the right to health.
Sincerely,
Katharine Yuengling
Emory University '14
Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health MPH Candidate
