Topic 2: The Question of Disease Control in Prisons
Country: Mozambique
Committee: World Health Organization

School: Skyview High School
Name: Dan Lowry

Diseases such as Tuberculosis in prisons continue due to a variety of reasons. Perhaps the greatest reason the world still has tuberculosis in such places is a lack of funding. Nations today have a massive array of problems facing them and groups such as convicted criminals are certainly not the highest on anyone’s list of things to fund with increasingly tight resources. However, diseases like TB run rampant in prisons and have no reason to care about prison walls. People who visit in prisons, employees, ex inmates, all of these are at risk themselves and the surrounding public. Also, TB is becomingly increasingly drug resistant and is making it more and more difficult to successfully cure a victim.

Mozambique feels that this is a problem that has to be solved. Unfortunately it is incredibly expensive to do so. So we are forced to ask where the money will come from. Will it come from those who need it the most, developing countries like Mozambique? Probably not. We quite simply lack funds to tackle this particular problem and would need international support to do so. This international community must recognize this disease for the epidemic it is and to put the resources needed into fixing the problem.

The WHO must look to industrialized nations for the solution to this problem. While it may seem expensive for these nations to put enough money to fix this world issue, they must recognize that the rest of the world is not as well off as they. They must realize solving this issue will gain them the respect and admiration of the world’s masses and they must not look at this problem as a measure of pure economics. Mozambique suffers from prison problems as well, due to lack of funding, 140 prisoners have been found crammed into a cell meant for 90, as discovered by members of the leading Frelimo party. Because of this disease is rampant and help is badly needed. Therefore, the most efficient solution to the problem would be for the ten wealthiest nations to form a committee to organize, oversee, and facilitate the eradication of tuberculosis and all other diseases that flourish in prisons and spread to outside victims. Nations like Mozambique and our other African brethren are owed this support as reparations from the European countries that held us in bondage for decades. Mozambique was held captive by Portugal, which by leaving us with no internal support or fully formed government, contributed to this problem. We as well as all other former colonies ask for their help in fixing this problem that they helped create.