Carolayna's world

It’s Christmas time, the city is shining with the lights. Behind the carols, the trees and the presents there are stories. Ones have someone who is missing, others just would change something in their lifes, but children fill me with happiness.
For several years, I dressed up as a royal postwoman at 5^th January, this is the Three Wise Men eve. I enjoyed it deeply, for a while I was taking part in children’s excitements. Dreams became true in their feelings while sadness vanished behind their smiles. Their innocence keeps this wonderful story alive. 
Although every year I shared the magic with every wish they hoped, one day I met a little girl who really reached my heart. She was in the middle of the crowd, holding her brother’s small hand. She couldn’t be older than 6, but her sweet look expressed the warm soul of a mother. They weren’t alone, a cold teenager was there taking care of them as a nanny. I noticed they didn’t belong to a poor family, quite the contrary. I went closer to give them some sweets. The two children were really attached, as if they need each other to breath. I guessed there was something wrong with their parents.
The little girl accepted my present while her eyes were flooding with tears. She embraced her brother with strength and kissed me on my cheek. I standed for a while until I understood how a small lovely sign could retorn the magic in their eyes. Surely, they had an amount of toys, but happiness of that day lies on the excitement of believing in fantasy.

Hi classmates! I’m writing in response to Moonlight. He/She asked me for the influenza vaccine. In fact, it’s a current issue that really worries everybody.

Firstly, I’ll introduce you a general view about the famous avian influenza . In my opinion, the media are exaggerating about the problem. It’s true there’s a big danger for humans and, for this reason, scientists are working very hard to avoid the possibility of being infected by the virus. Moreover, authorities are regulating the birds to control the situation.

On the other hand, the most important problem is in the poor countries, as usual they won’t have the enough resources to protect their populations.

The flu virus mutates frequently, causing the vaccine used to fight it to become less effective. For this reason, the current influenza vaccine is not successful for avian influenza. You won’t be protected in front of the illness if you get the present influenza vaccine. Please don’t be scared, there are people who really need the available vaccine and the stocks are being reduced very much.

I would like to send you a calm message: I can assure you that the investigation of the real successful vaccine for avian influenza is making incredible progresses. But, specially remember that there isn’t any affected person yet, and maybe there won’t never be any.

Last week I was walking for Barcelona when I stared in front of a pharmacy. I was watching at the shop window while I was thinking how stupid the things I was looking at were. Is a wrinkle cream really necessary for humans while millions of people are dieing for diseases such as malaria, tuberculosis or AIDS? It’s an important reflection we all should do.

I understand that, in our capitalist world, people are worried about earn so much money as possible. Actually, the pharmaceutical industry is one of the most profitable business after weapons and drugs. Health should be out of the consumerism circle, but it moves millions and millons of dollars. We could think that it’s necessary to invest a lot of money to get effective medicines. Though this is completely true the fact is that the industry is spending about 30-40% of its profits in marketing. Sadly, labs give an amount of advantatges to doctors everyday to increase their sales (such as free trips). This is a kind of bribery that should disapear.

The health industry want us to believe that it’s making a huge work to help us. From my point of view, step by step our life quality is increasing, but what about the poor countries? Their diseases are not worthwhile. Furthermore, poor people have our illnesses too, but they don’t have acces to the medicines.

If you want to get more information or help the people who really need your aid click on this link: www.farmamundi.org