Someone from home recently said this to me during a Skype conversation. Putting aside the fact that Africa is a continent and not a country, the statement really struck me. I have first-hand knowledge of exactly how many vaccinations are required to safely travel abroad and realize that it’s an expensive and time-consuming process. It was not the hurdles that I or anyone who wants to visit me in Malawi has to jump through that made an impression, though. It was the fact that so many people view the diseases endemic to developing countries as nuisances that impede their travel plans and not the life-sucking, productivity-reducing, socially-devastating afflictions that they are. In fact, it was not so long ago that several of these “Third World diseases” wreaked havoc on American soil.
Up until the early years of the 20th century, yellow fever claimed the lives of 100,000-150,000 Americans at a time during epidemics. Not to mention the lives that malaria took up through the 1940s. Cities like Houston, Texas – where I’m from – and throughout the U.S., were repeatedly ravaged by epidemics of these arboviruses, thanks to the ubiquity of mosquitoes and poor sanitation practices. Also, let’s not forget the poster child for Third World diseases – HIV – and how the U.S. was able to prevent it from becoming a full-fledge national epidemic before affordable treatment was even developed.
How is it that America has managed to eradicate yellow fever, malaria, childhood diarrhea, and all manner of other preventable/treatable diseases from its borders while so many other countries continue to suffer from an extreme health burden that reduces productivity, shortens life spans, and generally retards progress in every sense? Perhaps we in the developed world should change our point of view. Instead of thinking of these diseases as nuisances associated with vacation destinations, we should start viewing them as the unacceptable result of neglect, colonial mistreatment, and poor management of international aid. If we could project our concerns for health and happiness beyond our family, friends, and community, then the problem of “too many shots” could rapidly become the concern of an outdated, more selfish era.