Tuesday, September 08, 2009

A news article in The Guardian Weekly of 21.08.09 by one Xan Rice talks about a 24 year old woman, Wanjiku who gave birth to a boy in Nairobi's Pumwani hospital in Kenya. Her bill for delivery was $ 45 which she was unable to pay because she is a single mother with another child at home. She was locked up in a detention ward with 42 other poor mothers for 8 weeks because the hospital wanted her relatives to pay her bill. The writer is angry at this treatment of a poor mother but does not ask this woman why she got pregnant when she already has a child and cannot hope to feed her baby let alone give it an education. The boy will probably grow up to be a criminal like so many men in Africa. Poor people are no fools. They will come to the hospital, give birth and refuse to pay knowing that the hospital will have to release them in the end because it will run out of space and it will cost the hospital to feed them indefinitely. All over the developing world poor people are breeding without restraint, cutting down forests, poaching big animals to near extinction and killing rare species for bushmeat all in the name of survival. They seem to have no responsibility to their children, to society or to the world which cannot sustain any more. India will reach 1.5 billion by 2050. Agricultural land is disappearing as more houses are built, land will turn to desert as water tables fall and food prices are rising at 20% yoy. The tyranny of the feudal landlords was very bad but the tyranny of the poor will surely deatroy the world.

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