Too big of a difference...

Scenario number one...

I eat some bad food on Friday evening. I start getting sick on Saturday morning. I have diarrhea all day Saturday. By 2 am on Sunday morning I feel faint, I am breaking out in sweat, my heart is racing, and I feel (literally) I am going to die. I know I am completely dehydrated. I wake Mark up, I tell him I need to go to a hospital urgently. We get in our car, drive to a nice hospital, get admitted immediately. The doctors put me on a drip, check my heart, blood, etc. I stay on a drip for three hours. I receive two bottles of glucose solution, two bottles of antibiotics, and I have a nice clean bed to lie on. At 5.30 am I go home with a list of medicines for the next few days. The nice hospital has a 24 hour chemist. We pay (total cost rs 2500 / $ 50) and I go home in my car. Back in bed by 6, rest the whole day. Monday I am back on my feet.

Scenario number two...

Sunita (imaginary name) eats some bad food on Friday night. By Saturday morning she is sick and has diarrhea all day. At 2 am on Sunday morning she feels she is going to die but she doesn't understand what is happening because she is uneducated and no one has ever explained to her the symptoms of dehydration. She stays in bed and faints. Finally her husband wakes up in the morning and finds her unconscious. He tries to carry her out of the house. He does not own a vehicle and they live in a slum where there is no access for public transport. He desperately searches for a rickshaw but he has so little money it takes him 20 mn to find one willing to take him to the hospital. The nearest hospital is 10 km away and it is a government hospital. When they finally get there they find a queue of people in front of them and they have to wait for their turn. Sunita's husband pleads with a passing doctor who ignores him. Then finally he finds a helpful nurse who pushes them to the front of the queue. But then they have to fill a form and it takes another 20mn. By then Sunita is pale and lifeless. Eventually she gets to the emrgency ward. After much delay a doctor appears, prescribes a glucose drip and goes off. Sunita's husband has to leave his wife and run to the nearest chemist to buy the glucose bottle, needle, and the paraphenalia needed. He has no money but a kind stranger helps him. By the time he gets back it is too late. Sunita has passed away. She is lying on the dirty bed and the nurses urge her husband to take the body away as the bed is needed for the next desperate person.
Exaggerated? No. Millions die of diarrhea every year in the third world. It is all preventable.

What are we going to do about it?