Look Out...Hayley's Angry

I just need to process this right now...i can't concentrate on my schooling or studying, because this is making me SO MAD. It's been...just over a week since this has been just forced on me, like a tidal wave, and i have to accept that, right now, there is not a lot i can do about it. The injustice is just eating away at me, and i don't know what to do. I know what i want to do, but right now, it's not feasable.

But i suppose i should enlighten you as to why i am so incredibly angry.

A week ago, i watched a lecture about AIDS in Africa. Like i said in a previous post, i'm not used to being motivated into missionary-like action through a lecture. But this is different, and i can't get it off my mind. The more i learn, the more angry i get. My world has gotten A LOT bigger. I work in the Calgary Health Region. I'm learning about how to give good nursing care. I can look forwards to being "in-demand" for the rest of my career, because Canada's population is aging, and nursing staff is "badly needed". Normally, that's not where quotations marks should go. But here's what helped get me riled up...

• 100 new nurses graduated in Swaziland in 2003. Forty-one went abroad.
• ONE in three public-health jobs goes unfilled in South Africa.
• SIX doctors care for every 100,000 people in Uganda.
• 200+doctors care for every 100,000 people in Canada.
• ¾ of all doctors in both Zimbabwe and Ghana leave the country.

there is SUCH inequality, and it's making me sick! There is so much need for medical professionals, but our affluent nations continue to tempt them over to the Western world with promises of large salaries and better quality of life. And i'm caught here, because i do think that everyone deserves a chance to live with a high standard of living. A doctor practicing in Uganda gets $65 a month... he could be making an astronomical amount more practicing in a different country. But the need is so much more intense in Africa, and their shortages so much worse than ours.

I'm so proud to be Canadian, but my national pride took a hit today, when i found out that in the late 1990's Alberta paid for 40 doctors, and their families to be flown from South Africa to work here. I don't know how to feel...they're given a chance to live well, in a foreign country, but what happens back home? I can't feel good about taking the doctors they need so badly to treat our aging population...i don't mean to sound callous, but we're going to die, you can't stop it. But there IS something they could do in Africa, with the proper resources and financial backing.

There's probably a nursing school in Nigeria, where they're learning the same things as me; bed-making, vital signs, catheters, medication administration... and it's great! But then they will leave, not because they want to, but because they cannot make a living there, there is not enough money despite the intense need for nurses. It's as if Africa is a boat in a storm, where the storm is the AIDS pandemic. How can Africa as a continent respond to the AIDS pandemic if us, the affluent nations, continue to drill holes in the boat to drain them of their Health Care work force?!?!

"Take Lesotho, a tiny country where one in three adults has HIV. The government is poised to move ahead with a national AIDS treatment program that would alleviate about half the congestion in its medical wards, which would free up staff and mitigate one of the dire conditions cited as a constant drain on morale. But the country is seriously hampered because it doesn't have the necessary doctors and nurses."

I could accept it when i thought Canada was doing more than its share. Canada pledged $150 million US over 4 years... The States...who, might i add, make up one quarter of the global GDP, pledged only $500 million over the next two years. That makes me sad. But i can't accept using their doctors and nurses to boost our health care system if it means the continuing decimation of their own health care systems. Yes, Canada needs nurses. But its because of our own poor planning that we don't have enough nurses...we knew the baby-boomers were going to get old and need care, but nothing was done about it. Now we have NO right to import aid from countries we should be giving aid to.

ok, getting too worked up... thanks for reading