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"Barbaric" decision on dying woman?

Asher Kelman

OPF Owner/Editor-in-Chief
What do you think about this situation? Should a person undergoing essential treatment be kick out because they overstayed their via? IOW, does the host become morally responsible for his guests who are taken ill in his house?

_44356638_ghanapatient203x203.jpg

Photo BBC News (Editorial Use only)


BBC News said:
The medical journal The Lancet says it was "atrocious barbarism" for the UK British Border and Immigration Agency to expel a dying woman home to Ghana, where she has been unable to continue life-prolonging treatment.

Ama Sumani, who has terminal cancer, had been receiving kidney dialysis at the University Hospital of Wales in Cardiff, but had no right to remain in the UK after her visa expired.

Since her removal on 9 January, hospital officials in Ghana have refused her more dialysis because she could not pay beyond the first three months' treatment funded by the British authorities.

Click here to read the latest

MPs are expected to question the head of the Border and Immigration Agency about its decision - but what do you think? Should the agency have made an exception?

Source
 

Ray West

New member
Plenty of other countries could have taken her in. 'funded by British authorities' = funded by British tax payers. We have enough of own illnesses to treat, without taking on the rest of the world. Our hospital waiting lists are such that our folk go to India for ops. Charity begins at home, etc.

Haven't you got any problems with health care in USA?
 

Asher Kelman

OPF Owner/Editor-in-Chief
Sure we have problems here. However once treatment is started, it has to be continued. If you see a man dying in the streets in Calcutta and give him water to revive him, it may make you feel good as you go back to your hotel. However, you now own someone's else tragedy.

This is the dilemma health professionals have.

I this case, Britain has been sucking up new graduates from Africa leaving the continent health care in shatters. It is a multi million dollar expense in educating these foreign doctors that the U.K. grabs for free!

So it is not a big thing to provide dialysis in the UK. After all it's just salt water in the bath and a plastic tube. She could be squeezed in to a NHS hospital with little actual increased cost since the base costs are already covered. The bad press is not worth this action, never mind the moral issues.

Asher
 

Ray West

New member
I this case, Britain has been sucking up new graduates from Africa leaving the continent health care in shatters. It is a multi million dollar expense in educating these foreign doctors that the U.K. grabs for free!
If it is true, then is is possibly to make up for the numbers that leave the UK for better paid jobs in other countries.

After all it's just salt water in the bath and a plastic tube.
Well, easy enough to do it in Ghana, or wherever.

We have a visa/permiit system, for visitors, workers or whatever. We also have thousands of 'illegal immigrants', many from Eastern Europe, the newer members of the eec. They work at little above slave rates of pay, live frugally, and send much of the cash back home to support the families there. We get folk coming over, just to get hospital treatment for free. None of this helps this country, or its natives.

This is just one little incident, that the bbc/whoever, are making mileage from. There are much bigger fish they should be frying.

I'm not sure about the 'bad press'. I suspect many folk born here, who have seen the way everything has declined, think to themselves that she shouldn't have been here in the first place.

The trouble, with this sort of thing, is that it creates a precedent, then there is the next one, then the next, and so on. Our resources are not limitless.

Best wishes,

Ray
 
This is the dilemma health professionals have.

Yeah, but I would expand this to "This is the dilemma we all should have!", hence I think the case you pointed out is a very good example for massive failure.

Situations such as the described one, should be covered and more, equally covered throughout European law.

Such breach of human rights can not be tolerated and should be discussed in high courts or similiar.

Makes me sick to the bone. Then again, I am not astonished to read that, not at all.

In general, I think many countries would do well to re think their health strategies and take a good look at canada and other countries to learn about best practise.
 

Asher Kelman

OPF Owner/Editor-in-Chief
.

In general, I think many countries would do well to re think their health strategies and take a good look at canada and other countries to learn about best practise.

Canada would not get your prize for measuring out compassion either! Prostate cancer is so delayed that patients will get drive hundreds of miles to the USA and being indigent, claim free Radiation Therapy treatment!

Asher
 

BobSmith

New member
Such breach of human rights can not be tolerated and should be discussed in high courts or similiar.

And there's the crux of the problem. Ever increasing numbers of people see health care paid by someone else as a basic right. Why? All of us as individuals, families and governments bend over backwards to help many in need... and we could probably do a better and more efficient job of it. But still, we've done it so well that huge numbers now view it as an entitlement. When did it become appropriate for me to demand as my "right" to have someone else pay for proper care for me if I can't do it myself? Resources are not limitless. There has to be some point where a you say this we'll do, this we can't and won't. I have no idea what the merits of this particular case are but I flinch every time I hear access to health care touted as a right.
 
Adopted and proclaimed by General Assembly resolution 217 A (III) of 10 December 1948

Article 3.
Everyone has the right to life, liberty and security of person.

http://www.unhchr.ch/udhr/lang/eng.htm

I think that any health system that is structured at it's core to maximise profits would fail to provide service to people regardless their, race, colour, sex, language, religion, political or other opinion, national or social origin, property, birth or other status.

I am no specialist in this field of health services either, but I do understand the problems to a degree, and I can bring up examples of failure that would roll up your toe nails in digust. <grins>

If we take article 3 serious, many states would be required to reform their health service from the core.
 

Ray West

New member
Everyone has the right to life, liberty and security of person.

Looks good, sounds good, but can not possibly work in practice. The UN has gone way past its sell by date on this and virtually every other issue. It is basically a toothless dog.

We are living through some interesting times. All the old 'ism's' failing, one after the other, to be replaced by what?

The price of a couple of the 'Apple Airs' would go a long way to pay for the woman's treatment. What would you rather do, and why? We are looking at problems on a world wide scale, and trying to solve them with the mind set of a village elder, and that's on a good day.

Best wishes,

Ray
 

Asher Kelman

OPF Owner/Editor-in-Chief
And there's the crux of the problem. Ever increasing numbers of people see health care paid by someone else as a basic right. Why? All of us as individuals, families and governments bend over backwards to help many in need... and we could probably do a better and more efficient job of it. But still, we've done it so well that huge numbers now view it as an entitlement. When did it become appropriate for me to demand as my "right" to have someone else pay for proper care for me if I can't do it myself? Resources are not limitless. There has to be some point where a you say this we'll do, this we can't and won't. I have no idea what the merits of this particular case are but I flinch every time I hear access to health care touted as a right.

Bob,

My argument is a question too, not a simple advocate for opening the treasury. The background is that the British Health care system has vacuumed up medical graduates from Africa instead of training enough at home. This has impoverished further the care in each country so robbed. So we start with at least a "moral debt".

Then treatment was inititiated. One has a responsibility not to hydrate a thirsty man just to abandon him in a desert. Essentially sending the woman back to Ghana with no long term arrangement would be doing that.

Lastly, the treatment consists of ssending blood from the patient through a dialysis bath, which is just fancy salt solution and a special membrane. The incremental cost to the hospital is minimal.

If the British hadn't collonized Africa in the first place and then made its citizens part of the "British Commonwealth", then this wouldn't have occured!

Asher
 

John_Nevill

New member
Morally I agree with Asher, if treatment has commenced then it should be completed. However, there is a major migration issue from Eastern Europe / Africa / India into the UK and one has to ask the question why?

The UK government has no idea on numbers, but it is estimated to be 500k+ over the last 2-3 years. So why aren't people migrating to other parts of Europe?

The bottom line is UK has one of the best health and social security policies in the world, furthermore it's free to anyone with UK residence.

Even France has reviewed its health treatment policies, as no doubt they've realised economics dictate supply of such services.

I know a few people who have migrated into mainland Europe and have been instructed by local health services that they would be better served back in the UK for treatment.

UK's National Health Services are under immense pressure, so unfortunately circumstances like this will become commonplace in the years ahead.
 

BobSmith

New member
My argument is a question too, not a simple advocate for opening the treasury. The background is that the British Health care system has vacuumed up medical graduates from Africa instead of training enough at home. This has impoverished further the care in each country so robbed. So we start with at least a "moral debt".r

You may be correct. As stated, I don't feel I know enough about the full circumstances of this instance to comment with authority one way or the other. I was simply reacting the the notion that health care is somehow a basic right that is owed to us. I don't see even the quoted UN proclamation that we have "the right to life, liberty and security of person" to support the notion that health care provided by someone else is somehow a basic right. Every human should have the right to live their life in liberty but the quality of that life is ultimately their responsibility, not an obligation forced on others. For any number of reasons those of us in better circumstances feel a desire to help those in lesser circumstances... but that's what it is... generous help... not a legal obligation.
 

Ray West

New member
I tend to disagree entirely with Asher, on all counts wrt his opinion on this issue. If dialysis is not difficult, as he keeps saying, and it is available in Ghana, then it should be minimal cost over there. She overstayed her visa period in the UK. It could probably have been extended, if there was a valid reason. Who owns the hospital in Ghana? It is a funding issue, that's all. Ghana is such a caring country, it offers no treatment for its own citizens, unless they pay, so why on earth should it be expected that free treatment should be expected elsewhere, for long term ailments.

Concentrating on this trivially small incident, is a waste of effort. However, in some ways it is comforting, since it diverts attention from the main issues involved, which are probably too big to think about. (Geldorf's (sp) 'band aid' mentality).

Many folk did, and still do, get medical training in the UK, and then go to private practice in the USA and elsewhere, and that that is part of the problem. If the African doctors had any conscience, then they would stay at home and help their own people - maybe they are just as greedy as the others? Or, possibly they believe it is better to work for a system like our nhs, where treatment does not depend on the individual's ability to pay. I wonder which it is...

If this had been, say, a white man from Australia, it probably wouldn't even have been mentioned. BBC news reporting is getting to be a joke.

Best wishes,

Ray
 
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Concentrating on this trivially small incident, is a waste of effort. However, in some ways it is comforting, since it diverts attention from the main issues involved, which are probably too big to think about.

Not trivial for the woman and her family, Ray, but I agree it diverts attention from the bigger issue of an explosive increase in health care costs. Health economists write that the driving forces include new and expensive medical technologies (e.g., MRIs), higher cost of drugs, high health insurance in some countries, a cohort of physicians working less hours than preceding cohorts, and maybe population aging.

The main reasons why health care is so expensive include new technology and drugs if you live in a country with public health care. Drug companies persuaded governments some years ago to extend the period before another company could market cheap generic versions of their products in order to increase research budgets. Sounds reasonable except that they use most of the profit for advertising rather than product development. So your (and our) long waiting times for treatment are in the interests of high salaries for drug company CEOs and their advertising agencies, and (of course) shareholders who get money for doing nothing. It makes my blood boil!
 

Ray West

New member
Hi Michael,

But that is only a symptom of the wider failure of capitalism/consumerism, etc. You, we, all of us generally try to fit in more or less, with what is nearest to us. That is difficult enough. But, then, due to marketing, news programs, other stuff, even this forum, we have to try and fit in with other communities. This never needed to happen a few hundred years ago, even maybe 70 years ago. It is quite obvious that the current governments, international organisations, etc., do not have a clue about how to change their structure to take care of this concept.

There is plenty of opportunity for change, but at the moment, we, as individuals, are far too comfortable, and it is easier not to bother. I guess the next stage up from not bothering is wasting bandwidth in this type of discussion. Then, maybe the next is to give, say a bit of time and money to do something about it - but that will not change a single thing, in the long term. All it needs is the hearts and minds of mankind as a whole to change, but that won't happen yet, since the 'isms' are self perpetrating, since that is what they are designed for.

One word, 'greed'. To survive, work hard at being detached. All these problems are caused by a few neurons firing in few brain cells of a few people, all quite trivial, really.

Best wishes,

Ray
'
 
There is plenty of opportunity for change, but at the moment, we, as individuals, are far too comfortable, and it is easier not to bother. I guess the next stage up from not bothering is wasting bandwidth in this type of discussion. Then, maybe the next is to give, say a bit of time and money to do something about it - but that will not change a single thing, in the long term. All it needs is the hearts and minds of mankind as a whole to change, but that won't happen yet, since the 'isms' are self perpetrating, since that is what they are designed for.
One word, 'greed'. To survive, work hard at being detached. (My italics).
Not just one word, Ray, but two. Greed and altruism are constants that fight to control minds and behavior. The shifting balance between the two makes change inevitable. The various 'isms', as you say, are designed to be self perpetuating, but meanings change as the war rages on. As civilians in this war we are impotent to alter its course most of the time. Until the outrage reaches a point when a whole mass of mercenaries and the populace cry "enough already" forcing governments and corporations to shift focus when threatened with their own survival. My experience in health related fields is that solid evidence coupled with social activism can shift the balance but the process, even with a single issue, takes years of effort. Hence the credo 'To survive, work hard at being involved' makes more sense to me. But you have to pick your battle carefully. And when the outcome of that particular battle looks like its going your way, greed changes tactics and looks elsewhere to make a profit.
Cheers, Mike.
 
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