Half of the year I live in Nepal. It’s a wonderful, terrible, beautiful place, and the absolute best place for me to live as a dedicated student of Tibetan Buddhism. Due to lack of good water supply and best hygenic practices at local restaurants, we who live here experience chronic digestive problems. We usually just live with it. And make lots of jokes about it. As the Nepalis say, “Ke garne?”
But for the past few months, I’ve really been feeling sick, exhausted, and have experienced rapid weight loss (not that I didn’t have a lot of weight to lose!), and so I finally took a trip to what is considered the best clinic in Kathmandu, frequented mostly by expats and elite locals. Although the diagnostic tests didn’t confirm it, after discussing my symptoms with the doctor, she told me it’s very likely I have a parasite infection.
The standard and common treatment here is a medication called Albendazole. I went to the pharmacy and bought two tablets for a whopping 10NPR each—that’s 10 U.S. red cents each. I’m the type who doesn’t take a lot of pharmaceuticals unless absolutely necessary, so when I got home, I turned to the internet to learn more about this medication. I read this:
Albendazole developed in 1975.[4] It is on the World Health Organization's List of Essential Medicines, the most effective and safe medicines needed in a health system.[5] The wholesale cost in the developing world is between 0.01 and 0.06 USD per dose.[6] In the United States, however, it is very expensive as of 2015 at about 201 USD per dose.[7]
Wikipedia (my emphasis)
And that made me feel sicker than my parasites do. Especially at this very moment the Republicans are feverishly devoted to taking away our healthcare. Republican policies are worse than the worst parasites.