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ATM Pharmacies launched in Africa
Started by kansasgal
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Thank you, USAID and UNESCO for spending US tax dollars on this sort of foreign aid when it actually is cheaper to hire a pharmacist in ZA. Sure that'll help Rhodes out just fine.
I agree, lord999, foreign "aid" that works just to devastate the existing local economy is not "aid".
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This is kind of like that free shoes to an impoverished area that one company did when you bought a pair of shoes. Yes, it is great they were doing something to help an impoverished area, however, no one considers that those shoes took away someone's job who sold/made shoes in the area or that they were likely not all shoeless and could have used the same funds for something that was more of a necessity. Goodwill is great, but is only beneficial if applied properly.
There's a concept in aid called "appropriate technology" which this is going to be a textbook example of how not to do something. This machine needs power, monitoring, access to fairly high end circuitry and electronics, and does a function that a human ACTUALLY would be cheaper to do. It's all kinds of inefficient and the aid vortexes resources that should have been allocated elsewhere.
To give an example for ourselves, imagine your house gets blown over and USACE sends you:
1. 10' by 10' cloth canvas
2. 2 x 4 and 1 x 2 wood
3. A handsaw
4. Hammer and nails
And tells you to make shelter from that. Yeah sure, some of us could look at the spec and do the necessary manual labor. But for the vast majority of Americans, this is inappropriate because how many of them actually have any tactile experience with a western handsaw (hint: you do not cut with the pull, you cut with the push unless the manufacturer is crazy enough to send you a Japanese saw). For most of us, this would be a doom-it-yourself project.
The appropriate technology if it has to be self-constructed is an IKEA-idiotproof set of precut canvas, wood, a mallet hammer, and stakes. Not quite as transportable or scalable like the rawer materials, but you'd actually get more success out of mechanically challenged Americans.
The best pharmaceutical aid we could give Africa is debatable, but it's certainly not Robopharmacist, not when pharmacists are very easy to come by and products are scarcer than the US. This is economic imperialism, and it's bad for both of us.
To give an example for ourselves, imagine your house gets blown over and USACE sends you:
1. 10' by 10' cloth canvas
2. 2 x 4 and 1 x 2 wood
3. A handsaw
4. Hammer and nails
And tells you to make shelter from that. Yeah sure, some of us could look at the spec and do the necessary manual labor. But for the vast majority of Americans, this is inappropriate because how many of them actually have any tactile experience with a western handsaw (hint: you do not cut with the pull, you cut with the push unless the manufacturer is crazy enough to send you a Japanese saw). For most of us, this would be a doom-it-yourself project.
The appropriate technology if it has to be self-constructed is an IKEA-idiotproof set of precut canvas, wood, a mallet hammer, and stakes. Not quite as transportable or scalable like the rawer materials, but you'd actually get more success out of mechanically challenged Americans.
The best pharmaceutical aid we could give Africa is debatable, but it's certainly not Robopharmacist, not when pharmacists are very easy to come by and products are scarcer than the US. This is economic imperialism, and it's bad for both of us.
