Summary
Published September 2021.
“Zimkitha was the world to us”, her mother says. “When she died, we lost everything: our hopes, our future, and our faith. She was more precious than any gem, and we will never recover from the fact that she is gone.”
The pain felt by the relatives of Zimkitha (name changed to protect privacy) after the 32-year-old woman died from tuberculosis is evident in these words. In addition to their sorrow, however, her family, struggling to maintain a living in southern Africa, have also lost the only income source for their household of seven, since Zimkitha was the only working member of the family.
What is the value of a human life? Although this question might best be answered by philosophers or religious scholars, it also confronts public health experts, especially when deciding whether a clinical intervention is worthy of investment. Indeed, it is the language of economics (instead of medicine) that often dominates discourse around health and illness, particularly in so-called resource-poor settings. In such parlance, human beings are reduced to disability-adjusted life-years and suffering is only worth addressing if doing so is deemed to be sustainable or cost-effective.