The same fever is not the same fever: Part 2

A few days ago my good friend's relative rushed into the city with a severe case of dengue fever. My friend was already hosting one family who had come with a medical problem, but took this second family into his tiny slum home as well, then worked for several days to get them admittance and treatment at the local government hospital.

Facilities at public hospitals in India are poor, and after two days his condition had worsened. His platelet count fell below 50,000 and his hands and feet were heavily swollen. The doctors said that he needed platelets. But the hospital had no platelets to give.

So my friend rushed back to the slum and found five guys to take to the blood bank. He got them all to the hospital, along with his wife and 7-month-old son, who needed to be admitted for a severe urinary tract infection! Unfortunately, three of the guys who came with him did not have strong enough health to donate blood. The three who were accepted donated their blood, which then had the platelets removed.

Meanwhile, the three guys who couldn't donate took care of the sick man and my friend's wife and son, a necessity in a hospital so overcrowded that each patient will only rarely see a nurse, and won't be fed at all. One of those guys got the donated platelets from the blood bank when they were ready and brought a nurse over to administer them. Unfortunately, the nurse left immediately and a new nurse had to be found to switch out each bag. The whole process went too slowly and the last bag of platelets started going bad in the heat.

Tens of millions of people are infected by dengue fever every year. At least half a million cases are severe enough to require hospitalization, and tens of thousands of people die.  In the four days since my friend's wife brought her baby to the hospital, she's seen three babies in her room die of dengue.

In the movie Elysium, set 150 years in the future, the richest people on Earth have fled the planet and live in a massive satellite called “Elysium”, with huge houses, clean air, and leisurely lives. Advanced medical technology can fix any disease or injury. Citizenship is tightly controlled and a defense system keeps attempted immigrants out, killing many.   Back down on a polluted, overcrowded Earth, the poor of the world live under a robot-enforced police state, working under dangerous conditions to make products that enhance the lives of the rich in their space station. The masses on Earth access health care at overrun hospitals with technology that is decades behind. The rich on Elysium could provide them with better care, but choose not to, instead hoarding the resources for themselves. Many of the Earthlings who risk their lives to sneak onto Elysium are simply trying to get medical care for their children.

Some of the movie reviewers who saw Elysium thought it was an interesting commentary on what Earth might look like 150 years from now, as the rich continue to get richer while land and resources for everyone else continue to run out. Elysium's director had to correct them.

"Everybody wants to ask me lately about my predictions for the future," the director says.  "No, no, no.  This isn't science fiction.  This is today.  This is now."

We are already living on Elysium.