He prayed—Henry was a committed Christian. He thought of Isatu, thought of trying to live for her. But survival is not primarily an act of individual will, of course. It’s an act of collective will. Henry had only contracted TB because of choices humans made together to deny treatment to people in poor countries. A child born in Sierra Leone is over one hundred times as likely to die of tuberculosis than a child born in the United States. This difference, as Dr. Joia Mukherjee writes, is “not caused by genetics, biology, or culture. Health inequities are caused by poverty, racism, lack of
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