It's a Smaller World After All

The state of poverty and health on a country has a huge influence on its political, social, and economic states. Because we are increasingly become a more and more globalized world, it is imperative to address these issues of poverty and health as a collective group.

The world is plagued by health inequalities leaving the burden on the global community to handle. If the global community mobilizes and has a common vision, much can be done to help vulnerable groups from unnecessary suffering and death. As discussed in Global health improvement and WHO: shaping the future (http://www.equinetafrica.org/bibl/docs/LEEehs.pdf), one of the most urgent MDGs is the 3 by 5 target in HIV/AIDS treatment, which is to provide 3 million people in developing countries with access to antiretroviral treatment by the end of 2005. Another big goal of the MDG is to address the gorwing epidemics of non-communicable diseases, like heart disease and diabetes. In order to adquately address these issues, health determinants must be dealt with first. Health determinants that need to be addressed include: poverty, armed conflict, and levels of education of women. These issues all lie outside of the health sector, but are still crucial to achieving the desired health outcomes. If these factors can be addressed appropriately, then success of our health interventions are better. Today's reality is that we are living in a global world and we are more interconnected than ever. With all these new challenges that globalization brings (increase migration of people and microbes, bioterrorism, etc) more emphasis and resources needs to go towards public health. Public health needs to be viewed as a foundation of health to tackle these new challenges we face living in a global world.

The future of global health should focus, in my opinion, on educating women and ensuring proper water and irrigation. If these 2 factors are given priority, I believe it'll address a multitude of health problems that afflict vulnerable groups. The woman is key to the family, and by educating her and making her financially stable, she is able to educate her children on proper health and nutrition practices, as well as provide them with basic education to elevate their socioeconomic status. Also, water sanitation and irrigation is another very important issue to focus on. Many issues arise from not having proper access to safe and clean water. By solving this issue, many lives will be saved.

We tend to emphasize the implications globalization has had on developing nations such as growing inequities in wealth and access to health care and services, but at the same time globalization has given developed nations TOO much wealth and TOO much access, leading to their diminished health. With globalization brought a more convenient lifestyle for those in developed countries. Globalization has indirectly contributed to our poor diet, inactivity, smoking, and alcohol and drug use. This has shifted the trend from communicable to non-communicable caused deaths. Risk factors for heart disease, diabetes, and other non-communicable disease need special attention now and in the future.

Poverty and health have an increasingly strong impact on the political, social, and economic states on a global scale urging us to unite together.