The
article’s main focus is one company’s goal to try and help the African people
in their need for basic health care.
Samsung, an global electronics leader based out of South Korea, it
typically thought of providing high quality televisions and the latest in
mobile phones or tablets, has recently introduced a mobile, solar powered
medical clinic. This clinic, currently
based in South Africa, is focused on providing some basic, more preventative,
health needs to the more rural areas of the country. “The
7m long truck contains ear, dental, and eye clinics and a mini laboratory where
blood analyses can be done.” The types
of tests that can be conducted are those that can identify some of the most
serious health conditions that Africans face like malaria, HIV/AIDS, and more
recently is increased blood pressure. The
seemingly only downfall to the mobile clinic is its inability to fulfill any
medical prescriptions that are needed, forcing the individual to travel to a
government, or private, medical facility to receive the medications. Samsung’s solar powered medical clinic
provides these services as well as keeping emissions down, and enabling a learning
environment for those waiting to be seen by a certain medical service. “The vehicle cost Samsung R2.25-million
(US$250 000), with equipment and medicines paid for by the company, in
consultation with the departments of Health and Social Development, NGOs,
pharmaceutical companies and universities to help funding”. This solar mobile clinic has the ability to evaluate
health concerns to up to 300 people per day, which is the initial step in
obtaining Samsung’s goal of reaching 5 million lives by 2015. This, no doubt, will happen with its plans to
expand its territory into East and West Africa.
It is going to take private corporations like
Samsung working in conjunction with local, and national, governments to be able
to provide some of the more basic needs that everybody deserves. The article did continue to speak of other
contributions that the Samsung Corporation takes part in, like mobile education
centers capable of utilizing easy-to-use modern technology in providing education
at all levels to those in the rural parts of Africa. Also, Samsung supports an Electronics
Engineering Academy in multiple countries on the African continent to
educated and certify over 10,000 electronics engineers by 2015. This is truly a corporation that not only
sees the inequality gap that has been created between many of the African countries
and the remainder of the world, but a corporation that is actually doing
something about it, and not only in just one aspect. The concept that both health and education
are inseparably joined is why the two are attacked at the same time, “if a
child cannot hear or see properly, they can't learn properly". This is what should be the philosophy of every
country throughout the world. The future
is in the next generation of people, not the one that is currently living. I know that is redundant, but it is
true. If, on a global scale, both health
and education are not seen as interrelated, particularly for those that are
kids, then society will cease to exist, and so will the human population.
Matt
Partridge
04/19/2013
at 4:25 pm
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