[Peace-discuss] Health Justice the Best Cure for Ebola

[David Johnson via Peace-discuss]

  Health Justice the Best Cure for Ebola

October 8, 2014
Margaret Flowers, Walter Tsou, & Jill Stein 
<http://greenshadowcabinet.us/member-profile/8580>

The United States' broken health system adds to the risk of potentially 
catastrophic epidemic.

Doctors Margaret Flowers 
<http://greenshadowcabinet.us/member-profile/4>, Walter Tsou 
<http://greenshadowcabinet.us/member-profile/7523>, and Jill Stein 
<http://greenshadowcabinet.us/member-profile/8580> of the Green Shadow 
Cabinet comment on the U.S. health system in light of the global 
epidemic and the first confirmed case in Texas, Thomas Eric Duncan, who 
tragically died this morning.

Dr Margaret Flowers <http://greenshadowcabinet.us/member-profile/4>, 
Green Shadow Health Secretary:

Ebola is going to test health systems around the world in the coming 
months, and as we've seen in Africa, the measure of the impact will 
correlate with the ability of nations to implement universal public 
health measures. Here in the United States, corporate interest and its 
control of the political process has created the most expensive and 
exclusionary health system in the developed world. This is a dangerous 
setting for an epidemic.

We have a system designed first and foremost for profit, not for better 
health outcomes. This has not only created a sub-class of millions 
without coverage, but has also fragmented the system into private 
institutions, all with different systems and technologies. A major 
outbreak in the U.S. of Ebola, or some other disease, would find fertile 
incubation conditions like those in poorer communities and would be 
compounded by an uncoordinated response.

If this happens there will be a call for Government intervention, and 
those private health profiteers who rallied against public health on 
free-market ideological grounds, will demand assistance - a taxpayer 
bailout. The risk of an epidemic and its potential effect on markets 
should shake Wall Street's belief in perpetuating the cruel and 
inefficient for-profit health system.

Dr. Walter Tsou <http://greenshadowcabinet.us/member-profile/7523>, 
Green Shadow Surgeon General:

Media outlets stated that the diagnosis was missed because crucial 
travel information was not relayed through the electronic medical 
records system. But it was not widely publicized is that Mr. Duncan was 
a Liberian national on a US visa. It is very likely because US disallows 
Medicaid coverage for the first five years of immigration that he was 
also uninsured. What role did Thomas Duncan's insurance status play in 
his initial dismissal from the emergency room?

Unfortunately, this is not a rare occurrence. Crowded housing conditions 
and barriers to health care, there could be substantial risk - even 
potentially a perfect storm in the making for Ebola to take root in the 
U.S. There are several lessons being driven home within the U.S. as 
around the world:

  * First, our health care system which explicitly discriminates against
    immigrants is a disaster that is ill equipped to deal with uninsured
    individuals with highly infectious diseases like Ebola. Only a true
    single payer, universal health care system, inclusive of all
    immigrants, documented and undocumented, will be able to stop an
    epidemic.

  * Second, our reliance on a for profit pharmaceutical industry which
    concentrates its research dollars on the chronic illnesses of
    wealthy developed countries like the US means that tropical diseases
    and filoviruses like Ebola and Marburg get ignored with no research
    dollars for vaccines or treatment for decades while we spend
    billions on erectile dysfunction drugs. After long neglecting the
    developing world, we are suddenly scrambling, grasping for anything
    that could be a cure when we should have been working for a cure for
    the past 30 years.

  * Third, we ignore public health at great peril to our nation. There
    is almost nothing that could bring a world power like China to its
    knees, but in 2003 SARS did precisely that. China, who like the U.S.
    had high health access inequality, found that people with SARS like
    symptoms were not seeking medical care because they could not afford
    the bill. Instead they were spreading SARS throughout the country.
    It was only after they instituted a policy that all patients with
    respiratory symptoms would be seen regardless of ability to pay were
    they able to stop the epidemic. In a recognition of how important
    public health was to their economy, they tripled the budget of their
    CDC and built them a new campus.

Green Shadow Cabinet President and physician, Dr Jill Stein 
<http://greenshadowcabinet.us/member-profile/8580>, says the Ebola 
outbreak clearly demonstrated the need for health justice:

The discussion of Ebola in the US has been sorely lacking in a public 
health reality check, which Dr. Flowers has raised. In fact, the massive 
gaps in US health care create pockets of vulnerability, that could seed 
local Ebola hot spots in the US.

The missed diagnosis of the first US Ebola case in Dallas is a red flag. 
This signal event resulted in a tragic delay of treatment and isolation, 
exposing up to 100 contacts, and potentially contributing to the 
patient's death. The diagnosis was missed because crucial information 
was not relayed through the electronic medical records system. 
Unfortunately, this is not a rare occurrence. Add to that crowded 
housing conditions and barriers to health care, there could be 
substantial risk - even potentially a perfect storm in the making for 
Ebola to take root in the US.

The lesson is being driven home within the US as around the world: 
Health injustice anywhere is a threat to health everywhere. A truly 
health-protective response to Ebola should include urgent measures to 
implement a Medicare-for-all health care system to insure we are all 
protected from Ebola now and from future epidemics that inevitably lie 
ahead.

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