| Composite photo of California candidates for governor via DJ USA Facebook
Part V of “Cancer/Medical Moonshot–NA/ASEAN” Series
All California gubernatorial aspirants must provide details of how they would implement back-to-basics programs if they win the election. It is not enough that they promise to do their best to reduce grocery prices and other ills of society. But they should tell the public, especially the voters, how they would do it all once elected to office.
A new governor must commit to a “Covenant With the People” and viable plans to combat cancer, other deadly diseases, and social forms of cancer. Crises like homelessness, poverty, and other maladies sap the socioeconomic fabric of society, more so since the 2028 Summer Olympics will be held in the City of Los Angeles and other venues in the County of Los Angeles.
Take, for instance, the coming nursing shortage of some 13 million Nightingales by 2030, according to the World Health Organization. The new governor of California should have a track record of building bipartisan coalitions with the private sector to help educate and board-certify hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of medical professionals. And to work together with other governors in the United States and with the public, and private-sector leaders of Canada, Mexico, the ASEAN countries, and other foreign entities to remedy the said global shortage of nurses and other medical workers. After all, California by itself is the world’s fourth-biggest economy. It can provide socioeconomic global leadership.
“A new governor must commit to a “Covenant With the People” and viable plans to combat cancer, other deadly diseases, and social forms of cancer. Crises like homelessness, poverty, and other maladies sap the socioeconomic fabric of society…”
Perhaps a new governor-elect of California, his (or her) staff, and the Economic Advisory Council (EAC) must study how the U.S. colonial government established America’s first overseas medical center in the City of Manila, Philippines. The project began in 1901. It can be replicated again in the Philippines and other strategic countries. The United States Export-Import Bank or other private investors can finance the costs of the proposed new medical centers. Businesses and entities from willing state partners and other countries may widen ownership and participation in the ventures.
Then the new California governor must ask the EAC to look into how the United States established the Culion Leper Colony in Palawan, Philippines, in 1906. It became the world’s largest, most organized leprosarium by the 1930s, isolating thousands of patients to combat leprosy. It operated as a self-contained town with its own currency until cures were developed, and it was declared leprosy-free by the World Health Organization in 2006.
A leper colony is an isolated community historically established to quarantine, segregate, and house people with leprosy. The idea of a colony was primarily due to fear of contagion. The last functioning leper colony in the U.S. was Kalaupapa on Molokai, Hawaii (established in 1866), with another notable site at Carville, Louisiana. While most are now museums or abandoned, some active, supportive communities still exist in the world.
Perhaps a new Golden State governor can cite the U.S. project on Culion Island (Palawan Province) as a model for new medical facilities in California (and elsewhere) for people living with cancer, especially survivors. But with lots of modern amenities and medical facilities.
Perhaps such a “Cancer Co-op Community” can also help in solving one of California’s and America’s (and the Third World’s) pestering problems of homelessness, lack of healthcare, and other social cancers like poverty. And all, the proposed projects can be carried out according to the tenets of Cooperative Economics, which will make the nation’s (and global) economy one of the people, by the people, and for the people. And not for the two-percent filthy-rich barons, their family-owned monopolies, cartels, and political cronies only.
Residents of the “Cancer Communities” can invite their immediate kin, especially military veterans with PTSD, to find affordable housing there. They can be accommodated, and thereby the proposed project can help provide livelihoods and other socioeconomic opportunities in a co-op style.
