Germany 'exporting' old and sick to foreign care homes

[Jan Klimkowski]

Growing numbers of elderly and sick Germans are being sent overseas for long-term care in retirement and rehabilitation centres because of rising costs and falling standards in Germany.
The move, which has seen thousands of retired Germans rehoused in homes in eastern Europe and Asia, has been severely criticised by socialwelfare organisations who have called it "inhumane deportation".
But with increasing numbers of Germans unable to afford the growing costs of retirement homes, and an ageing and shrinking population, the number expected to be sent abroad in the next few years is only likely to rise. Experts describe it as a "time bomb".

This is the logic of capitalist, profit-driven, health care.

First we had doctors and nurses trained in eastern Europe, India, Pakistan, Africa etc lured from the country that had educated them to western Europe by higher wages, to care for the sick and elderly in the UK, Germany, France, Scandanavia etc.

Now, the Germans have started sending the elderly to these countries where wages and costs are lower.

And this is in the strongest economy in Europe.

I heard a radio interview with a Greek doctor, in his 40s, who said his medical qualifications enabled him to work anywhere in Europe and he was currently earning 1200 Euros a month in Greece, living on his rapidly diminishing savings. So, soon, not only will ordinary Greek people not be able to afford drugs or treatment, but there won't be any doctors and nurses left to care for them.

Meanwhile, as bankers continue to make fortunes from central bank scams, MSM tells us there's nothing to worry about.....

Then there's this:

Counterfeit medicine from Asia threatens lives in Africa

Malaria is one of the diseases affected by unscrupulous traders in fake and substandard drugs

Kathleen E McLaughlin

The Guardian, Sunday 23 December 2012 16.33 GMT

International health experts are warning of a mounting health crisis in parts of Africa because of an influx of counterfeit medicine from Asia that is playing havoc with the treatment of diseases such as malaria. Porous borders in Africa coupled with indifferent oversight in China are combining to turn the continent and its pressing health problems into a free-for-all for maverick manufacturers, some of whom are producing pills with no active ingredients at all.

Precise data is hard to track down because of the informal nature of African health systems. But several recent studies warn that as many as one-third of malaria drugs in Uganda and Tanzania are fake or substandard, with most believed to originate in China or India.

Apart from the lives lost, there are additional concerns about drug resistance building in east Africa, experts say. "It's a crisis any time someone dies," Nick White, who chairs the Wellcome Trust's south-east Asia major overseas programmes and the WorldWide Antimalarial Resistance Network (Wwarn). "It's a massive problem that people have simply ignored. It's not like a boil that's beginning to burst because it's been a problem for a long time. What has happened is we are beginning to recognise it more."

Laurie Garett, senior fellow for global health at the US Council on Foreign Relations, said: "Nobody has a head count or a body count on numbers of Africans that have died as a result. But China's role certainly has been dreadful."

David Nahamya, chief drug inspector for the Ugandan national drug authority, said: "What we are told is this, if someone wants to counterfeit a drug, they just take the package to China and they can make it in thousands. You have seen how they make it there. They can copy anything."

An increasing list of studies and surveys about fake, counterfeit and substandard drugs has emerged in recent years, but because of deeply entrenched interests from all sides governments, NGOs and pharmaceutical companies there has been great reluctance to call the scourge of killer medications in Africa and elsewhere a crisis.

This is despite the fact that everything from life-saving Aids medication to emergency contraception are being copied, faked and made with shoddy components on a huge scale.

Patrick Lukulay, vice president of the US Pharmacopeial Convention's global health impact programmes, said it was no secret that the majority of dangerous medications came from China and India, as those countries had the world's largest production bases for both active ingredients and finished drugs.

While India has stepped up oversight, "China is only now just catching on", he added.

Though it may seem like an immense amount of trouble to counterfeit a £3 packet of malaria pills, Lulukay noted that the global trade was estimated at £46bn a year. Counterfeiters know their markets well and target medications accordingly. Efforts to combat the activity are in their infancy.

"If you want to be efficient in fighting it, you have to have a very strong regulatory authority, very strong collaborations, very good distribution networks and good co-operation between governments," said Sabine Kopp, who manages the anti-counterfeiting and medicines quality assurance programmes at the World Health Organisation.

As yet, none of those components are in place and counterfeiters, apparently unconcerned with harming sick people in developing countries, continue making huge profits.

It is a loss to global aid organisations, as well, said Dr Nick White. "Think of the hundreds of millions, if not billions, you spend on pills to help people in poor countries," he said. "It's bonkers not to make sure they're authentic and instead people are ending up with shoddy pills from China."

This work was funded in part by a grant from the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting