Forum: RI's health inequities

Thu, 10/09/2008 10:22 AM  |  Reader's Forum

It is obvious why there is such a health divide.

In the so-called developing world we make a lot of noise to keep us in stress, have open stagnant water and open rubbish everywhere for the mosquitoes and rats, pile children up on thousands of motorbikes. Many people drive like complete maniacs, promote smoking by every means possible, burn, pollute and choke ourselves and do everything we can to avoid reaching old age. We just want to die young.

Only in the Third World do we have sirens to speed people to their graves but hardly ever see an ambulance for the living -- and then only after the fee has been negotiated.

Here we respect and venerate the old because they are rich enough or lucky enough to make it. In the West there are just too many oldies for them to be valued.

If we actually want to live longer then we have to stop being stupid. It doesn't take expensive WHO reports and conferences to tell us that.
RAFIQ MAHMOOD
Bogor

Soekarno-Hatta Airport -- Oct. 7, p. 4

The only difference between many of the "legal" taxis and the "illegal" ones is that the former pay a fat fee to the airport authority for the privilege of ripping off customers with extortionate fares in tatty cars.

Real progress will only be made when to become a "legal" taxi requires the operator and the vehicle to meet a basic standard. Until then, newly arrived travelers will continue to have a bad impression of Indonesia's capital.

And those of us who know the city will continue to fend off swarms of mosquito-like touts while we wait for a cab from a reputable firm.
DAVID
Jakarta

The politics of deforestation -- Oct. 6, p. 6

Indonesia should understand that, with or without the Guinness World Record book report, deforestation is happening at an alarming rate. We should stop deforestation for any purpose, and we should press world nations to pay the bill for carbon use.

With that money, Indonesia could employ the peasants that now devastate our forests and stop the role of the big chukong bosses from Malaysia that steal our wood and export it labeled "Made in Malaysia".
MOHAMMAD ALI
Jakarta

Reviving communism -- Sept. 30, online

Nowadays, except in Bolivia and Venezuela, nobody takes the threat of communism seriously, but it may be that the Indonesian Military (TNI) is using it as a straw man or stand-in for radical Islam.

The same way that the Turkish Army has prevented Islamic parties from coming into power (except very recently), the TNI may regard itself as the protector of the Indonesian Constitutional concept of Pancasila, which in theory should protect religious minorities.
TOMASO TETTAMANTI
Lugano, Switzerland

Citibank denies responsibility -- Oct. 6, p. 7

Does the writer of the letter criticizing Citibank feel that the foreign banks have conducted themselves less responsibly than, say, Indonesian banks pre-1998? How many of those bankers went to jail? Banks are service companies which provide products in demand by customers at a point in time.

Sometimes the customers don't always understand the products, but do gamblers fully understand the risks they assume? Do smokers fully appreciate the risks to their health?

Why stop at prosecuting bankers who sold the clients what they were asking for? Why not charge the cigarette manufacturers and the shops which sell the little fags with murder and then we can fill the prisons with offenders and maybe that will solve the traffic problems.

But why should bankers and shopkeepers be hung when bombers enjoy pleasant sojourns in jail or remissions of their sentences and claim the attention of the Indonesian media ad nauseum?

Where will the witch hunt end? French Revolution deja vu? When are consumers finally responsible for their own decisions?

The free markets are built around the concept of "caveat emptor". The buyer is responsible for his choices.
T. COTTON
Pattaya, Thailand

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