Dear President,

As you are reading this letter, hundreds of people are dying across the world. Why, you may ask? People are dying because their country does not have the medical supplies that they need to survive. However, this problem could be solved. The United States government should help improve the medical conditions in third world and developing countries.

Poor medical conditions in developing countries like Pakistan, The Democratic Republic of the Congo, and Kenya lead to outbreaks of disease .These outbreaks could end up affecting other countries around the globe, including the United States of America. According to a New York Times article, a yellow fever epidemic is arising in Angola, and it is happening because the country was short of nine million vaccinations. Disease spreading like this could easily be prevented if the countries with ground zero (the place where the disease originated) had the medical supplies that they needed. Unfortunately, they do not have the proper medical tools. This is why we should help them gain the medical equipment that they desperately need.

Being a developed and high-tech country, there are many ways we can help these other countries in distress. First of all, we can send tools that are efficient, but cheap. That way, low income families in developing countries can afford the tools to prevent illness. For instance, there are now portable, low cost water filters that we could easily donate to countries with water-borne viruses. Also, there is a device called the Solarclave. This tool can is a solar powered instrument that can sterilize medical tools. This type of equipment could save hundreds of lives by preventing infections caused by dirty medical tools. If we want to go to an even higher extent, we can send field doctors over to countries with medical problems and help them do things such as surgery and examinations. This would help patients from countries with limited medically trained staff get proper care.

As much as we would like to believe that we help, the United States government often ignores outbreaks going on in third world countries. “Clearly, donor countries like the United States, the W.H.O. and the countries at risk need to invest more and act faster when there is an outbreak. Industrialized countries need to provide the money to come up with a faster production process and increased capacity to handle this and future epidemics.” As stated by in a New York Times article. As you know, ignoring these outbreaks has horrible effects. Instead of addressing the problems like we should be, we are only neglecting it, which lets the problem grow until it is almost too advanced to handle. If we take action straight away, we could eliminate the disease while it’s little and completely prevent an outbreak.

As you can see, the United States government should help improve medical conditions in third world and developing countries. We have plenty of reasons to help, plenty of ways to help, and plenty of problems to help. You and I both know that countries like Pakistan, Kenya, and the DRC (Democratic Republic of the Congo) need medical tools and supplies desperately. So what are you going to do? Are you going to sit back and watch hundreds of people die, or are you going to take action and save lives?

Sincerely,

Rachael S.