It's day two after the big waves hit South-east Asia, and as expected people are saying that countless lives could've been saved IF things had been done differently. Apparently the earthquake was detected in some areas, but the authorities did nothing to warn or evacuate the people by the coast even though they had an hour or more to do so before the waves hit. It will be interesting to hear what kind of excuses these people will throw around for the next few days, and who they will blame. And I suppose the different governments will be taking measures to prevent such disasters from causing so much damage and loss of life again....as is always the case. Measures are only taken after people have died....
But the biggest issue that bugs me is the fact that the protection of lives depends mainly on how much money the people have. While in Aus, I watched this movie called John Q, starring Denzel Washington as a father of a boy dying of a heart disease. The medical expenses for the boy's treatment are too high for the father to afford, so unless he pays up, he has no choice but to let his son die. The story takes a dramatic turn when the desperate dad takes the hospital hostage in order to force them to operate on his son, but the point of me telling this story is that the hospital was willing to allow a boy to die because the father couldn't pay for the operation. And in the case of the tsunami disaster, most of the countries affected by the tsunami were too poor to afford the sophisticated equipment used to detect seismic activity... and their governments will likely be too poor to pay for the resulting damage, let alone the medical care of the victims. And the question on my mind is, why is the worth of people's lives based on how much money we have? Why go through all the trouble to develop advanced medical techniques, or drugs, or technology that are meant for protecting or treating people, if we can't use them for those purposes simply because they're too darn expensive? What, are all these things made only for the people fortunate enough to be super rich? Gimme a break! The more developed countries have the resources and money to help the affected countries. They can afford to provide developing countries with the technology they need to prevent such tragedies. They can afford to provide medication and treatment to poor countries like Africa that are afflicted by diseases like AIDS and malaria....but will they do so? Highly unlikely. It's not just the fact that poorer countries can't afford the equipment, but the attitudes of not wanting to share new technologies with others for free after so much trouble and money put into developing new things. It's all about money and politics, when it should be about helping save people's lives. And after such a big disaster has happened, I bet the most authorities are going to do is throw the blame around. And Bush and Howard will probably still be wasting money and resources sending troops to Iraq, when they could be putting the money to better use helping the tidal wave victims. In the meantime, the poor countries like Sri Lanka and Indonesia that were most badly affected by the waves will be left taking forever to recover from the damage. It won't help that their economies will weaken as well, since more people will be wanting to get out of the country and tourism will drop dramatically. :(
Maybe I'm wrong. Maybe some of the richer countries will rise up and go all out to help the affected countries. If that happens, then it'll be one of those rare times where I'm glad that I'm wrong. But only time will tell if they really will rise up....
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