Money is necessary for survival and can save lives. In developing countries, lack of money leads to a lack of essential resources like clean water and healthcare. Donating to reputable charities can save lives in these countries, as the cost of HIV drugs is much lower. However, solving these problems requires more than just money. Conceptualizing money helped create a viable vaccine for HIV, which could improve the human condition forever.
Our world is one that requires money, for almost everything related to quality of life. We disburse money for food, shelter, health care, medicine and clothing. We also pay for things like energy and water. We have to use money for essentials, because that’s how the world economy works. Without money, we would soon lack essential things for survival. So it can literally be said that money saves lives; save our own lives.
In developing countries, things that we might consider essential are often lacking due to lack of money. These things, like clean water or adequate shelter, often cost much less but are still not affordable for large segments of the population. Some other things we consider necessary, such as health care or access to prescription drugs, are only accessible to the highest earners in third world countries. Thus a child may die from lack of an antibiotic, which for many US, Canadian and European citizens hardly seems possible.
Unsanitary conditions such as contaminated water and inadequate plumbing or sewage problems can easily make whole cities sick in a third world country. Some may die. While we raise alarms if spinach becomes contaminated, and we should, there simply isn’t the money to employ stricter safety practices in some countries.
We can rate some parts of Africa as utterly ravaged by the AIDS virus. While the cocktail of HIV drugs is now doing a lot to extend people’s lives in Western countries, the numbers of HIV contraction and deaths in Africa continue to rise. In some areas, HIV-positive children no longer have parents because they have succumbed to AIDS. They also have no means, or very poor means, to acquire money to provide for themselves.
The problem is so perplexing that the governments of such countries often have to ask other countries and charitable organizations for financial assistance. This is where your wallet comes into play. It is absolutely true that by contributing to reputable charities you can not only improve lives but also save them.
Compared to the high costs of HIV cocktail drugs in the United States, the costs of HIV drugs in Africa are much lower. Thus, the donated money can actually be used to save the lives of many. What costs US$6,000 (USD) for a year of HIV cocktails in the US costs around US$600 in Africa. So a $6,000 donation a year could save ten people, a $600 donation could save one. $50 a month seems like a small price to pay to save someone’s life. However, in South Africa, the government is only able to spend around $40 a year on a person’s healthcare, sadly below the mark.
Consider the following. Every day, one person buys a $3.50 latte macchiato at Starbucks. If it cost you $50 to make your own coffee, on the other hand, you’d average $90 more each month. Add $10 and you could theoretically save two lives a year.
Not everyone is in the same position to make such a contribution, but many Westerners are. However, a problem of magnitude in African and other developing nations requires more than just money. Conceptualizing money helped create a viable vaccine for HIV. How amazing would it be to prevent HIV forever? It would not solve all the world’s problems, nor would it save every life. But it would surely be a start in the right direction, an act of opening the heart as well as the wallet that could improve the human condition forever.
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