The UN has themed this year's World Water Day as "Water and Health." Yet more and more people are becoming unhealthy and dying from being denied access to water. Worldwide, more than 5 million people, most of them children, die every year from illnesses caused from drinking poor quality water.

The privatization and full cost recovery policies of the World Bank and International Monetary Fund (IMF), which have been imposed as conditions for loans in over 12 African countries, have led to people resorting to using unsafe water sources after they could no longer afford water. South Africa is a case in point. A cholera epidemic broke out after people's free water was cut and they were forced to drink from a river.

Spare a thought on World Water Day for the daily suffering of the millions of people who do not have water because the IMF, World Bank, and various multinational companies are allowed to make profits while the rest of us are close to dying of thirst.

Anna Weekes
Media Officer
South African Municipal Workers Union
 
 
Lack of health care
In his February 19 column on the 10-year prison term meted out to Robert Latimer, the Saskatchewan farmer who killed his severely handicapped daughter, Joe Young pointed out that working people like Latimer are left virtually alone to deal with the care and suffering of children because of the lack of public services to help them.

The Montreal daily La Presse reported March 18 on a statement by the Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons of Canada that only 5 percent of dying people receive palliative care to reduce their suffering.

The next day, 14-year-old Chelsea Capra Craig, who was severely handicapped both mentally and physically, was found dead at home. Police have accused her mother of poisoning her with drugs, which she then ingested herself in an attempted suicide.

As the Militant article noted, such events underscore "the urgent need for the unions and the entire labor movement to organize a fight to make health care a right available to all and financed by the state."

Al Cappe
Montreal, Quebec
 
 
The letters column is an open forum for all viewpoints on subjects of interest to working people.

Please keep your letters brief. Where necessary they will be abridged. Please indicate if you prefer that your initials be used rather than your full name.  
 
 
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