Who Cares About Health - a poem

Who cares about the intense pain, suffering, and the premature death by two decades of people with sickle cell disease and the families it affects? Only 100,000 suffer SCD in America, but eight million worldwide including 6.4 million in Sub-Saharan Africa do. Who cares?

          Who cares about the discomfort and the pain of uterine fibroids, the millions of women whose lives it affects, and the cost of hysterectomies and the fertility that eliminates? Who cares?

          Who cares about maternal health, fertility, morning sickness, birth defects, preeclampsia, premature birth, low birthweight babies, even post-partum depression and the mothers and infants it affects? Who cares?

          Who cares about pandemic preparedness, early treatment, or the hundreds of thousands of human lives preparedness and early therapy for viral infection can save and that scientists ignore a whole class of broad-spectrum antiviral drugs called NF-kappaB inhibitors? Who Cares?

          Who cares about preventing colds and flu, or preventing the increase in heart attacks and strokes that flu and Covid can cause, or cares if preventing those is even possible? Who cares?

          Who cares about preventing or delaying cancer, or improving cancer treatment? In this post-caring society, who even cares about cancer if they themselves don’t have it? Who cares?

          Who cares about curing diseases, or if that is even possible? Isn’t that someone else’s job? Someone somewhere far away – like in Maryland? Maybe they care, but should we?  

          Who cares about those who are sick in the townships and villages of Africa or those who must live in refugee camps who cannot afford medicine? Who cares about them? Who cares?

          Who cares about the old, the sick, the disabled, the infants and children of impoverished mothers half-way around the world with little food and no medical care? Who cares?

          Who cares about emerging zoonotic diseases, Ebola, Zika, West Nile virus, Hantavirus, the next Covid bat virus, Dunge fever, yellow fever, Lassa fever, breakbone fever, or deadly H5N1 avian influenza? Who cares about pathogenic killer viral diseases? Does anyone care?

          Who cares that over four decades we essentially cured HIV/AIDS by conducting controlled clinical trials – one trial at a time, making progress one step at a time? That’s history now. Who cares?

          Who cares about conducting randomized controlled clinical trials of existing, safe, affordable, and potentially highly effective off-patent medicines and nutraceuticals to help against all these health conditions and a hundred more? Who cares about making rapid progress against disease? Who cares?

          Who cares when politicians speak passionately about these issues but provide no path to solve them? Many talk about improving maternal health but offer no concrete plan to do so. Who cares?      

          Our elders and ancestors used to remind us that health equals wealth. But today, who cares?

          Health is ephemeral, here today, gone tomorrow. Who cares about health? Who cares about research to rapidly confirm complementary therapeutic remedies and improving disease outcomes? Who cares about disease prevention and saving lives in the future? Who cares about making progress against disease? Do you care? Really? Isn’t caring someone else’s problem? Think about it. Do you?

 

          Howard Steel Armistead, member, International AIDS Society          July 25, 2026