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posted by janrinok on Monday December 30 2019, @09:53PM   Printer-friendly
from the need-not-greed dept.

Rwanda makes its own morphine while U.S. awash with opioids:

It was something, the silence. Nothing but the puff of her breath and the scuff of her slip-on shoes as Madeleine Mukantagara walked through the fields to her first patient of the day. Piercing cries once echoed down the hill to the road below. What she carried in her bag had calmed them.

For 15 years, her patient Vestine Uwizeyimana had been in unrelenting pain as disease wore away at her spine. She could no longer walk and could barely turn over in bed. Her life narrowed to a small, dark room with a dirt-floor in rural Rwanda, prayer beads hanging on the wall by her side.

A year ago, relief came in the form of liquid morphine, locally produced as part of Rwanda's groundbreaking effort to address one of the world's great inequities: As thousands die from addiction in rich countries awash with prescription painkillers, millions of people writhe in agony in the poorest nations with no access to opioids at all.

Companies don't make money selling cheap, generic morphine to the poor and dying, and most people in sub-Saharan Africa cannot afford the expensive formulations like oxycodone and fentanyl, prescribed so abundantly in richer nations that thousands became addicted to them.

Rwanda's answer: plastic bottles of morphine, produced for pennies and delivered to homes across the country by community health workers like Mukantagara. It is proof, advocates say, that the opioid trade doesn't have to be guided by how much money can be made.


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  • (Score: 1) by fustakrakich on Tuesday December 31 2019, @06:56PM (8 children)

    by fustakrakich (6150) on Tuesday December 31 2019, @06:56PM (#937960) Journal

    No different than any other large institution. It responds to the same stimuli, from the same people. It is still your creation.

    --
    La politica e i criminali sono la stessa cosa..
  • (Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Tuesday December 31 2019, @10:28PM (7 children)

    by The Mighty Buzzard (18) Subscriber Badge <themightybuzzard@proton.me> on Tuesday December 31 2019, @10:28PM (#938040) Homepage Journal

    No, in fact a government does not respond to the same stimuli as an individual or any other form of large institution. Its scope and function are different from every other sort, thus what it responds to differs accordingly.

    --
    My rights don't end where your fear begins.
    • (Score: 1) by fustakrakich on Wednesday January 01 2020, @05:24AM (6 children)

      by fustakrakich (6150) on Wednesday January 01 2020, @05:24AM (#938130) Journal

      You create differences where there are none. All power works the same way. The force is universal, and singular. The only "government" you are subject to is finance.

      --
      La politica e i criminali sono la stessa cosa..
      • (Score: 1) by khallow on Wednesday January 01 2020, @07:52AM (3 children)

        by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Wednesday January 01 2020, @07:52AM (#938158) Journal
        Here, you are again wasting our time. TMB is right here. Maybe you'll think next time or at least explain your position rather than feed us a patter of bullshit.
        • (Score: 0, Troll) by fustakrakich on Wednesday January 01 2020, @08:26AM (2 children)

          by fustakrakich (6150) on Wednesday January 01 2020, @08:26AM (#938161) Journal

          Only you can waste your own time. And you are still wrong... And since you don't listen, there is no point in explaining anything to you. You shall follow your master into the abyss.

          --
          La politica e i criminali sono la stessa cosa..
          • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 02 2020, @12:30AM (1 child)

            by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 02 2020, @12:30AM (#938428)

            Ah, the moderator, the scoundrel that has nothing to offer

            • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 02 2020, @12:48AM

              by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 02 2020, @12:48AM (#938435)

              fustakrakich is the embodiment of having nothing to offer.

      • (Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Thursday January 02 2020, @12:36PM (1 child)

        by The Mighty Buzzard (18) Subscriber Badge <themightybuzzard@proton.me> on Thursday January 02 2020, @12:36PM (#938566) Homepage Journal

        You might as well say that water and hydrogen peroxide chemically react the same because they have the same kind of atoms. No, that's not generalized to absurdity enough to cover your argument. You're arguing more along the lines of diamond and elemental sodium will react the same because they're both made of protons, neutrons, and electrons.

        --
        My rights don't end where your fear begins.
        • (Score: 1) by fustakrakich on Thursday January 02 2020, @05:18PM

          by fustakrakich (6150) on Thursday January 02 2020, @05:18PM (#938688) Journal

          You're looking at the various reactions and fail to see that the force that causes a reaction is the same, regardless the composition. There is only one. Obviously this is the nature of people also. We are aggregated, animated dust.

          "Capitalism" works because it occurs naturally. It works better if kept open. Communism is simply closed capitalism by an elite group. Like a monarchy it restricts upward mobility. On our side of the curtain we use finance for the same purpose, to ration capital and provide distraction to pacify, divide, and disperse the anger, and the voters give full consent when electing the bankers' servants to high office. This is the "government" they want. If you got any complaints, chalk it up the well documented natural long term effects of majority rule and collective living [urban lifestyle]

          --
          La politica e i criminali sono la stessa cosa..