I was listening to a news item the other day about a person from Ghana who was discharged from one of our hospitals before her treatment was completed  so she could be evicted from the country.

Apparently she had come to the UK and was seeking asylum to stay. She was requiring kidney dialysis treatment to stay alive but if she was sent back to her own country she would be unable to afford treatment and would probably die within months if not weeks.  The argument for kicking her out of the country was she failed to get a longer visa to stay legally so had to leave.

Today I heard a different but similar case where a woman had become HIV + after torture in her own country but this was not apparent until she had been in our country for some time. Again she was being kicked out and could not treatment back in her home country so could quickly die even through we had the drugs that would save her life.

One politician was arguing we had no responsibility to care for her and there were millions just like her who were close to death in the same way back in Africa which we were not helping so why make an exception for her. Our own hospitals had a long waiting list with people from this country dying as there was no facility to help them.

Did the Good Samaritan stay he had no responsibility or did he do what he could for the one he could help?

It reminds of a story I have heard several times in different ways over the years but it essentially goes like this.

A man was walking along the beach one morning and saw someone bending down every so often and throwing something into the sea. Catching him up he was surprised to see it was a youth picking up a starfish and returning it the water. When asked why the youth replied because "if I don’t it will dry up here in the hot sun and die". The older man said "but the beach goes on for miles and there are millions of these starfish you can’t make a difference to them". The youth replied by bending over and picking up another one and tossing it back into the water saying "but it makes a difference to this one".

I don’t know where the money would come from to pay for everyone. That’s not my job but I do know that Jesus would have done something to have helped them and we are meant to be his body here on earth. But what can we do and how can we do it?

Anyone got any answers to help me think this through?

Ron