Dr. Chris Beyrer, Professor of Epidemiology and International Health at Johns Hopkins University told Religion Dispatches that the scale of human suffering and death may be worse than Pol Pot’s Cambodia in the 1970s, and that regional and international inaction is analogous to the international community’s failure to stop the genocide in Rwanda in the 1990s. He estimates that about half of the population of Zimbabwe is either dead or has fled to neighboring countries. “I have been at this for a long time,” he said, his world-weary voice seeking to convey the urgency of the accelerating Zimbabwean disaster. “I’ve never seen so total a collapse of a health system.”
The origins of the PHR investigation extend back to last summer when Frank Donaghue (pictured) visited to train medical students in human rights activism. Circumstances were grim even then. In November when he checked back in to see how things were going, his contact implored PHR to come right away: “We are just waiting to die.” Donaghue scrounged for funds, quickly assembled a team of public health investigators, and headed to Zimbabwe in the week before Christmas.
“There are brave people who need our help,” he said. “Nobody is telling the real story about a country that is a wasteland.” Donaghue, a former Catholic and current Episcopal priest, carries his vocation with him into his human rights work. “Telling stories is what it’s about,” he said. “It’s what the gospel is about.”
http://www.religiondispatches.org/archive/humanrights/965/the_horror_mugabe_doesn’t_want_the_world_to_see
No comments:
Post a Comment