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STATES CHRONICLE – There is an incredible amount of death suffering going on every single day, particularly in countries that are not as developed as ours. These third world countries are lacking so many basic needs that even the slightest improvement in the management of their medical conditions could lead to countless lives saved.
In fact, according to a study performed by a team of researchers at the Johns Hopkins University, $5 per Year Could Save a Life in a Poor Country. And the number of lives would definitely be huge, as these poor nations account for more than 95 percent of all child and mother deaths each and every year.
If every United States citizen were to donate as little as $5 – actually, the exact sum is $4.7 – every year, the money would go into expanding basic health services (medication for conditions like malaria or pneumonia, birth control, nutritional supplements, etc.) in 74 different low and mid-income countries.
As many as six million children aged five and under died preventable deaths in 2015 alone, as well as more than 300,000 women who suffered from pregnancy complications. Each of these lives could have been saved if our government had allocated as little as $4.7 a year from our taxes to helping these poor countries.
The whole deal could prevent the deaths of as many as 1.5 million newborns, 1.5 million children, and around 149,000 mothers every year. This would practically reduce the number of deaths in each of these three groups by fifty percent.
Simply making family planning available would prevent somewhere around 28 million pregnancies and save 1.5 million lives a year. Increased access to birth control, also included in the $4.7, would account for the saved lives of 67,000 mothers, 440,000 newborns, and even 473,000 children. It would also prevent a stunning 564,000 stillbirths a year.
According to Bloomberg School of Public Health Professor of international health Dr. Robert Black,
For less than $5 per person, essential health services could reach the people who are most in need of them. Community health workers or primary health centers can deliver the majority of these services, which reduces the cost of expanding coverage.
It might sound like a very simple solution to prevent a great many deaths, but it’s a bit more difficult than that. First of all, an organization would have to take responsibility for distributing the money, something that would be a lot of work, and then we’d all have to get together for once and help out.
Still, if we can save millions of lives every year with just $4.7 a person, I’d say it’s worth a shot, isn’t it?
Image source: Wikimedia
