A Deadly Plague of Slums - by Mike Davis

[Jim Sagle]

http://www.commondreams.org/views04/0203-05.htm

Mass death soon may be coming to a neighborhood near you, and the Department of Homeland Security will be helpless to prevent it. The terrorist in this case will be a mutant offspring of influenza A subtype H5N1: the explosively spreading avian virus that the World Health Organization (WHO) worries will be the progenitor of a deadly global plague.

<snip>

…a true pandemic would probably overwhelm the world long before a vaccine could be developed and produced in large quantities. The potential accelerators of a new plague are the huge slums of Asia and Africa. Concentrated poverty, indeed, is one of the most important variables in any model of how a pandemic might grow.

<snip>

A principal target of IMF austerity programs has been urban public health. In Zaire and Ghana, for instance, "structural adjustment" meant the laying off of tens of thousands of public health workers and doctors. Similarly in Kenya and Zimbabwe, implementation of IMF demands led to huge fall-offs in healthcare coverage and spending

<snip>

Here, of course, is the rub. In the past, the rich countries, with few exceptions, have shown callous indifference to the monstrous human toll of AIDs in Africa or of the two million poor children annually claimed by malaria. H5N1 may be our unexpected reward.

Is this the way the world ends? Not with a bang, but a sneer of “Bring ‘em on!”?

[bobbieinok]

1. Aren't there many 19th novels about how the neglected

slums breed disease that then kills the wealthy who thought they were insulated in their bubble and therefore didn't have any responsibility toward the poor??

cholera and ....?

[Jim Sagle]

3. Florida 2000 taught us that freedom is indivisible:

By not upholding our fellow black Americans' voting rights, we lost the right to govern ourselves.

Will a new global plague remind us that survival is indivisible?

[loftycity]

2. Good Post

I have thought and read about this for 20 years. Just think with all of the Americans not covered by any health insurance. They will infect others not go to the hospital and it will get worse.
Our slums will be a big contributer and we let it happen.. the rich still think they are so insulated.
It is so disgusting.