Guest Post

The following is a guest post from a freelance writer who is looking to add to her writing portfolio. She prepared an article entitled "Third World Public Health Issues" for my site and included her by-line (with a link to her site) underneath it. She tried to come up with something that seemed like it would fit my audience as well as was something she knew enough about to write fairly confidently on. She welcomes your comments.


Third World Public Health Issues

Not many of us are aware of the health issues that face the poor, especially those who live in developing nations. We take basic facilities like running water, clean toilets, hygienic and regular meals, and a warm roof over our heads for granted while children are being born every second into conditions of squalor and poverty. Lack of sanitation and no access to even the most basic of amenities ensures that people are beset by diarrhea, malaria, HIV/AIDS, malnutrition, and other chronic health conditions. While it’s true that organizations, both public and private, from developed countries are doing their best to alleviate this state of affairs, there are various fundamental issues unique to third world countries that prevent any kind of aid from working effectively:

Lack of infrastructure: Aid can only do so much – it can help treat existing conditions and use vaccines to prevent the reoccurrence and spread of diseases. What it can’t do though is build enough toilets, arrange for clean drinking water, provide the children with access to education, or ensure that the poor get to eat healthy food. While there are a few aid programs dedicated to improving the basic infrastructure in villages, there’s not much improvement that they can bring about, because of bureaucracy issues.

Political red tape, corruption: Politicians are known to be a greedy lot; they’re only interested in lining their coffers and looting public money as long as they’re in office, little caring for the needs of the people in their constituencies. Most third world nations are governed by power and money hungry politicians who create as much red tape as they can when it’s a question of foreign aid. They end up taking a large part of the money as bribes in return for allowing the aid crew to do its job. With continuous situations like this, disillusionment creeps in and does nothing to improve the status of the poor.

Malnutrition: Children are born to undernourished mothers, so there’s no chance for them to grow up healthy. Most street children live off food waste scrounged from dumpsters or beg for a living. With no regular source of food, malnutrition is a major problem. For aid to tackle this issue, the root must be identified, which means people must be given access to jobs that allow them to earn a decent living so that they can continue to feed their families. This again depends on various local factors, not the least of which is the government.

No education: With no education to speak of, men and women are hardly aware of the dangers of eating off the streets, living in filthy conditions, having unprotected sex, and drinking unclean water. And even if they are, there’s not much they can do about it, not without money. The little money that comes their way is squandered by the men on alcohol and tobacco, with the women being abused if they oppose this habit.

For aid programs to be effective and achieve their goal, long term planning, combined with local effort, is a must.

This article is contributed by Sarah Scrafford, who regularly writes on the topic of Radiology Technician Classes. She invites your questions, comments and freelancing job inquiries at her email address: sarah.scrafford25@gmail.com.