The celebration of the World Day of the Sick this Sunday should lead to an appraisal of the kind of care that the incurably ill in our midst receive but it should also challenge unreflective views of health and illness.

A vast number of people in our world fall into the category of the “incurably ill”; many of them are dying from terminal illness. This group is not the focus of today’s media that put youth and vigour on a pedestal and underplays physical frailty.

 Pope Benedict XVI puts the matter plainly in his message marking the Fifteenth World Day of the Sick: “Human life …has intrinsic limitations, and sooner or later it ends in death.” His brief message therefore touches everyone.

In this Sunday’s Gospel Jesus assures the people gathered before him that it is as they reckon with their own lack and repudiation that they stand in the place of blessing: “How happy are you who are poor: yours is the kingdom of God … Happy you who weep now: you shall laugh.”

It is only when the truth about human existence is properly told and its limitations faced that life itself is properly valued. The Pope alludes to the story of the Good Samaritan holding up the individual who stopped in his tracks to care for another dying at the side of the road as a model for the Church.

But the Samaritan is a model for all. He did not ask about the injured man’s theology before helping him. Thankfully, our doctors and nurses serve the sick without seeking to make any narrow distinctions about who the “neighbour” is on the basis of race, creed or ethnicity.

National Health Insurance System

But human limitation is one thing, the obligation of the State and the personal responsibility of each citizen to look after his or her own health are other pertinent issues.

In his message, Pope Benedict considered also the many whom social conditions and the unavailability of proper health care have rendered “incurably” ill. He noted that “many millions of people in our world still experience unsanitary living conditions and lack access to much-needed medical resources, often of the most basic kind, with the result that the number of human beings considered ‘incurable’ is greatly increased.”

In our own country while some improvement in particular areas of the health sector can be noted much more is needed to allow each citizen to have access to the health care he or she needs.

The Chronic Disease Assistance Programme which now assists over 200,000 citizens has been of great value to many particularly in the low-income bracket.

The high cost of surgical procedures at private institutions, however, or the alternative of waiting long periods for simple procedures at public institutions make it clear that the proposed National Health Insurance System is a service that needs to be started, sooner rather than later. It is estimated that only 15 per cent of the population have access to private health insurance.

Improvements at public institutions and universal health insurance present only part of the picture. Dr Coleen Hart, a specialist in internal medicine, warned at a recent pharmaceutical workshop that the change in lifestyle of the average Trinidadian from laid-back to increasingly high stress without attention to proper diet and exercise could only impact negatively on the already high percentage of deaths due to heart disease.