Other Diseases, unrelated to drug-use or sex
Is it ethical for an organization like Sanjeevani Booti to exist? Sanjeevani Booti cares for people who have sexually transmitted diseases, infections from using injectable drugs, and people who have other stigmatized problems. We talk to people who are at risk for contracting these kinds of problems. Some people say that we assist bad people, and that we should instead turn our care toward conditions which affect more people and are easier to treat.
Malaria and tuberculosis (TB) are major examples. Both of these diseases are curable, and treatment greatly mollifies the discomfort these bring on. Moreover, the medicines which cure those conditions are inexpensive - it costs little and not long to cure an average person of malaria, and a little more money and time to cure someone of TB. With the money that our organization spends on prevention, we could instead buy medicines and treat people who will definitely die if they do not get treatment.
This is a difficult problem. Sanjeevani Booti does not argue on this topic, because it is definitely true that our education programs are expensive and medicine distribution is cheap. However, for a lot of different reasons, members and employees of our organization choose to work in the field of fluid-contact transmissible diseases, and our sponsors and donors choose to fund us specifically to continue to do what we have been doing. At the same time, if there is anyone who does not want to support our work, we are happy to direct them to other organizations that fight other problems.
In developed countries, AIDS is a workforce problem because it actually takes good employees and makes them disabled from work and a financial burden to society. AIDS treatment is bleak and comparatively few organizations focus on prevention as compared to treatment, mostly because people begin to care a lot more about AIDS after they know they will die from it. However, of the money that is spent on AIDS treatment, research, and prevention programs in Europe, the Commonwealth, and America, about 96% of all the money goes to treating infected people, and almost 3% goes to research. About 1% goes to prevention. It will never be so in India, because there simply will never be money for expensive treatments. Sanjeevani Booti counsels people, but its medical treatment cannot go much further due to money issues. We are a prevention organization.
