What is this about? Well, it's about a 9-month-old baby girl, Pia. She suffers from a rare (and deadly) muscle disease which can only be cured (more or less) by the most expensive medicine in the world, sold by the Swiss company Novartis. The cost of it is 1,9 million euro.
Baby Pia's diagnose was stated just days after a trial with this new medicine started (for free). She's helped with another medicine but this doesn't cure the disease, only lessens the symptoms. The other medicine is not available in Belgium so if she wants it, her parents need to come up with that huge sum of money by themselves. Pia's parents are just ordinary people. They don't own a capital. But they are desperate and want to fight for their daughter. So they came up with the idea of starting a SMS-campaign, asking people to send a short message (cost: 2 euro) to the numer 4666. First only family and friends were aware of it, but the campaign was soon picked up by the media. In just two days' time, the 1,9 was already raised and the sum is still growing.
Good news for Pia and her parents and I guess everybody is happy for them.
At the same time, this raises questions. Does the pharmaceutical industry have the right to ask for millions for a medicine because it can save a life? Novartis asks 1,9 million but tomorrow another company can ask 2 or 3 million. Something needs to be done about this.
And the people? Will they continue donating, when new cases of desperate parents pop up day after day? I guess not...
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