Izortze Santin Gomez,

Text written in Basque and translated automatically by Elia without any subsequent editing. SEE ORIGINAL

Life is the biggest

Izortze Santin Gomez,

Mikel has been on vacation in Thailand. He finished work on a Friday, took a couple of planes and traveled through Thailand for fifteen days. He has had a great time, from the beach to the beach, from the temple to the temple. Unfortunately, on the last day, a monkey bites him and he has to go to the hospital. The monkeys of the place can be transporters of rabies and transmit it to the human being through a cock. It is a serious disease with a mortality rate close to 100% if not treated. Fortunately, in a hospital in Bangkok he has been given the first dose of the vaccine and when he arrives in the Basque Country he has received the other necessary doses. Although rabies is not endemic in the Basque Country, hundreds of rabies vaccines are purchased and stored for these cases. We can go on vacation.

Ndeke is a cheerful four-year-old boy. He lives with his parents and seven siblings in a small village in Cameroon, and every day he goes with his older sister to look for water in a well three kilometers from his house. When it rains a lot, the water in the well is contaminated because it is mixed with used water due to poor sanitation. Ndeke has drunk this contaminated water and has gastroenteritis. He has been suffering from fever and diarrhea for days and suffers from severe dehydration, without knowing if he will reverse the situation. The rotavirus vaccine was first marketed in 2006 and was included in the vaccination schedule in the Basque Country in 2025. This vaccine does not reach the poorest countries and more than 400,000 children die each year from rotavirus gastroenteritis.

Arantza is 55 years old and lives in Bilbao. When he was four years old, he was diagnosed with type 1 diabetes, and since then he has to puncture his insulin daily. He has welcomed the recent scientific article published in the prestigious journal Nature, which has developed a new way of taking insulin through a cream applied to the skin. She enters the bed thinking about when this cream will be available.

Joab, a pediatrician from a village in Uganda, finds out, like Arantza, about this article in the Nature magazine. Joab’s reaction was different. He doesn’t care about the way he takes insulin, his main concern is that patients can get the insulin they need. In recent years, many patients have died because they did not have access to insulin.

It is undeniable that scientific advances in the biomedical field in recent decades have succeeded in improving human health and quality of life. New techniques have been developed to diagnose diseases, guidelines have been designed to prevent certain diseases and treatments have been found to cure diseases that were incurable years ago. However, these scientific advances have not reached all countries of the world in the same way. In fact, according to the World Health Organization World Health Statistics 2025, despite notable achievements in promoting healthy living, in many countries there have been significant delays in direct access to health services.

Science is the perfect tool to improve people’s lives, but unless scientific progress reaches every corner of the world, its contribution to humanity will not be complete. Life is the greatest, here and everywhere.