Prompt 7: Describe as many of the parties involved in your issue as possible. Don’t stop with those directly involved (those that experience disease or health inequity). Examine your issue as one that connects to other people and groups? Explain what connects all these people to the issue. How are they impacted? What might be their outlook on the issue? What shapes their outlook? Nationality? Class? Rich or poor? Educated versus uneducated? Race? Historical circumstances? A sense of injustice? A right to a livelihood? Give these people motivations for taking a particular outlook on this issue?

    Everyone is entitled to have the right access to medical services and medicine to aid them whenever their health is threatened. As for which parties are involved in this issue, any person that needs medications to relieve some type of pain is certainly involved in this issue. The first party that is involved in this matter would be the pharmaceuticals, doctors, nurses, medical faculty, and patients in countries that can afford to have these drugs available when needed. Lots of medical treatments require anesthesia and pain drugs before and after surgery so no additional pain occurs. But in countries with developed medical systems, there are chances of certain individuals taking advantage of their powers and that’s where doctors will abuse their powers and possibly certain patients start to become addicted. More nurses and medical faculty will be needed to help patients recover from addictive behaviors which cause more funds to be spent on that. These patients can also start to become so addicted that they must be released from the hospital because they spend their money on the drug instead of treatment. High-income countries have well-developed medical systems but also have drugs circulating in communities not well organized and funded in these countries. These opioids are also mixed with other dangerous substances such as fentanyl, which caused lots of patients that become addicted to dying. The rich doctors earn more money prescribing these drugs to patients and the patients if they get addicted will soon become poor and crave the need for these pain drugs which ultimately tends in their death.

    It’s quite different when discussing which parties are involved when talking about middle and low-income countries. The government is the first main party involved in these types of countries. The reason is that they mainly control the rules and regulations of the flow of certain drugs coming into their countries and restrict what drugs are allowed. Their main reason is that they don’t want their citizens to abuse these drugs, get addicted to them, and ultimately die from them. The government would also have to diverge its finances to create rehab and recovery center for patients wanting to recover from this even though there are chances they won’t. For creating these restrictions, they wouldn’t have diversified their funds and used them on essential things since they already aren’t comfortable with what they have. This then affects another party of the middle- and low-income countries which are the citizens themselves. Depending on the country, certain citizens are affected in different ways. Middle-income countries such as India and China produce a variety of drugs for a very affordable price compared to the prices of high-income countries. Due to these cheap prices, some citizens buy these opioids and have been dependent on them because of how effectively relieve their pain but don’t realize they're addicted to them. Because of this, another party comes in which are drug smugglers who smuggle these cheap drugs to low-income countries. But certain low-income countries such as Nigeria and Sudan have extremely strict regulations and they can’t even receive drugs when certain individuals are in dire need of them. That’s the other party that gets affected, the individuals that need surgery and don’t have any pain medications to suppress any pain before and after their medical treatment. As you can see, each party affects the other and that’s why the opioid crisis has become a worldwide health problem. As for what connects all these people and parties, it is the government. The government has the ultimate power over what rules they want to apply and how sternly they want to enforce its policies. When looking at this situation from an outside perspective, countries considered rich often suffer the problem of individuals abusing the availability of these drugs. Countries considered poor or in the middle of rich and poor usually either have individuals that need opioids but don’t have access to them or individuals have access to cheap versions of these opioids causing them to be addicted to them. All these countries have different varieties of races so it wouldn’t be just saying that certain races have the availability of these pain medications. Education could help these individuals because they can learn about their government regulations and with time, they can create some type of change to better get access to drugs to people that need them and ban them in areas where it is not needed. People that are not affected by this situation should still understand that other individuals suffer a great deal of pain because of strict regulations and availability. And others have no need for them all but use them because they have grown to be dependent on them. This is the injustice of this worldwide problem.