Bitter Pills:Medicines & The Third World Poor | Page 100

America, concludes: "The growing reliance on modern medicines has not only
served to alter local health care traditions and means of coping with illness, but
also to drain away resources without providing any long term improvements in
health or living standards in the community. Dependence on these products and
the agents and institutions which make them available, fosters the notion that
the solution to illness resides in the purchase and consumption of medications
rather than in improvements in living conditions." (4)
As we have seen, the poor will even put their health at risk by going without food
to buy medicines. There has been little detailed research into just how much of
their income goes on medicines. But a study in one town in Brazil found that poorer
families were spending about 6% of their monthly income on medicines from
the farmacias. <5) A survey in the Philippines revealed that another poor
community spent more - about 10% of their income - on paying for treatment.
This, despite the fact that the people defined their main health problems as
diarrhoea and low wages which cannot be cured with drugs. (6)
The poor come under direct sales pressure from local traders whose livelihood
can depend on selling as many medicines as possible. An anthropologist describes
how in South-Cameroon petty traders selling drugs and other commodities are
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