Prompt 6: Defining a global health issue and the relevant information for understanding it? What issue or problem has your group selected? Craft a problem statement using the ones provided to you in class. What countries or regions of the wolrd will focus on for your issue? What do you need to explain to communicate this issue to someone who doesn't know anything about it? How does social justice and fairness matter for this issue? Provide 3 URLs that provide useful background information.

 URLS:

1) https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fphar.2021.693426/full 

2) https://qz.com/1198965/the-surprising-geography-of-opioid-use-around-the-world 

3) https://www.goodrx.com/healthcare-access/medication-education/why-do-drug-shortages-happen 

Most countries around the world have suffered the struggle of some sort of drug shortage due to a variety of reasons. But to easily categorize these countries, it will be best to organize them into high-income, middle-income, and low-income countries. Countries that high-income countries would be the United States, Germany, and the United Kingdom. Countries that are middle-income would-be India, China, Russia, and Brazil. Countries that are low-income would-be Kenya, Nigeria, Saharan Africa, and Sudan. Each category of income in these countries has different reasons why there are drug shortages. As for high-income countries, their main reasons for drug shortages is due to wrongful business decisions, regulatory and government issues, and unavailability of raw materials. Middle-income countries and low-income countries face similar issues such as not having an abundant amount of funds to conduct research, enforce policies, and constant fear of drug smuggling. Due to this, countries on this level struggle to correctly put a set price on drugs and especially opioids. As for people that are unaware of one of the main issues that are happening globally, it is the severe problem of drug abuse. One of the most notable drugs that have been either abused or needed in areas but are unavailable is opioids. Opioids are considered narcotic drug that is used to relieve pain but for some time, it has been overused in some parts of the world and underused in others. Lots of individuals from certain countries have the luxury of having this drug availability when needed for critical medical procedures and helping to lower pain when necessary. But in these countries, opioids become open to the public and are usually mixed with other dangerous substances such as fentanyl which is the reason why so many become addicted and lose their lives to it. In then there are other countries where medical procedures will happen, and the patient will have to either deal with the pain if possible or surgeries won’t happen because of the chance that the pain might be too much for the patient. Other countries are surrounded by countries that create opioids for a very affordable cost and lots of individuals become independent on them which also takes a toll on their life. Social justice and fairness matter greatly in this issue because the people that need opioids to relieve pain don’t receive them and people that have opioids available at their fingertips abuse the drug which in turn ruins their lives.