Medicine for All

At this time, August 2005, the health system in Rio is the worst it has been in all the 37 years I have been here. The financial corruption is at its worst. What directly affects us is that monies destined for the public health programs (such as ours) has been diverted to pay for the construction expenses for the Pan American Olympics to be held in Rio in 2007. Thus we have had little medicines sent to our shantytown clinic for over a year now. We announced this in church and in community meetings as well as at the clinic.

At this time, August 2005, the health system in Rio is the worst it has been in all the 37 years I have been here. The financial corruption is at its worst. What directly affects us is that monies destined for the public health programs (such as ours) has been diverted to pay for the construction expenses for the Pan American Olympics to be held in Rio in 2007. Thus we have had little medicines sent to our shantytown clinic for over a year now. We announced this in church and in community meetings as well as at the clinic.

One day as I got ready to open the doors to the free pharmacy in our shantytown clinic, a little 10 year old girl, Thamires, accompanied by two other small children, approached me with large plastic bags full of bottles and boxes.
 
“Dona Barbara”, she said meekly, “We heard you tell us in church that you don’t have many medicines for the patients here, so João, Gloria and I went around to all the houses near us and collected the medicines people had in their houses that they hadn’t used up. We thought maybe someone could use them.”
   
Of course, we couldn’t use these medicines, but I didn’t tell them this for they had spent the last month happily doing what they thought would be helpful to the others in their financially poor community.

Charitable love and concern for others comes, sometimes from the people we least expect it to come from; in this case, 3 poor children who went out of their way to help others in their own creative way. God bless them, even in their medical ignorance, they teach a lesson to all of us.

Barb and Gus de Souza

Barb de Souza is a volunteer with the Institute of Religious Studies (ISER).  She serves as an advisor for popular education and training in the areas of health and sexuality.