Lets Lend Them a Hand
Received a newsletter from World Vision Singapore appealing for donations to needy kids in third world countries. I think the donations are within our means and we ought to lend them a helping hand. They could be prevented from going blind, disabled, paralysed or even death if we help by giving as little as a new piece of clothes worth of money.
While Singaporean children get jabs for tuberculosis (BCG), polio and MMR, a policy which helped Singapore attaining those mentioned diseases-free status, nightmare continues for thousands of children in poor countries. Like the a Cambodian child mentioned in the newsletter, a 10-year old girl, she did not receive the required vaccination to protect her from polio. As a result, the young girl is now stricken with a permanent mental disability and left with a shriveled arm and crossed eyes.
Another young boy from a remote village in middle-Africa, like any boys, he loves soccer, enjoying hanging out with friends and dislikes doing homework and hate doing household chores. Unlike his peers, he faced a devastating disability—he went blind six years ago. He is yet another victim from the dreaded yet curable eye disease called ‘Trachoma’. A nurse working at that village’s clinic said: “These patients don’t come for treatment because they know they can’t pay 3500 fracns ($9) for the operation. It’s shocking to see a child condemned to blindness by a disease that can be prevented with a small amount of clean water.
The hardest truth here is that diseases like polio and many others, though preventable, are robbing the lives of millions of children worldwide. Many times, these tragedies could have been avoided with as little as $1.50 a day or $9 for a corrective surgery. Singaporeans would have thought that diseases like these have been condemned to history books, but that isn’t true. Millions of people are still very much vulnerable to these health threat because of a lack of access to basic needs and medical treatment. With timely treatment and basic vaccinations made available to them in the developing countries, we can ensure that no child has to suffer, or even die, from any of these preventable diseases anymore. We can all lend them a very much needed helping hand by making meaningful donations!
The greatest wealth is health, indeed.
Polio: highly contagious viral infection that affects the digestive tract and, sometimes the central nervous system. Polio is a very serious disease that leads to irreversible paralysis and death
Trachoma: Leading cause of preventable blindness. It’s the result of infection of the eye due to unhygienic environment. If left untreated, the infected results in intense pain and scarring in front of the eyes. In advanced stage, the eyelashes turn inward and scrape the cornea.
Measles: a highly contagious viral infection that affects the respiratory system and causes the skin to develop a rash.
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