Alarming Health Issues Around The World
You must have remembered the nursery rhyme, “Early to bed and early to rise/ Makes a man healthy, wealthy and wise”. From your childhood you have learned that having a healthy body is the most important aspect in your life. So, the fed has also given much importance to the global health issues.
Need of proper health system: It is necessary to have a proper health system for the development of economy of a country also. The main objective of a proper health system is to respond to the needs and expectations of people in maintaining, promoting and restoring health.
According to the World Bank, a health system should include factors that are interrelated to health like, education, poverty, political and social environment. However, the developing countries face many challenges to have a robust healthy life, mainly due to insufficient fund, shortage of workers, interruption in supply, poorly functioning information systems and lack of inter-agency coordination.
Distressing health issues around the globe: Some of the disturbing health issues are-
* Women health: One of the major global health issues is the worsening condition of women’s health. In Ethiopia, Pakistan, Bangladesh and some parts of India, still child marriages are in practice. As a result, women at tender age are bearing children and their health conditions are getting worse. To stop all these, proper education and knowledge of family planning should be imparted to each and every person in the community. According to the experts, at least 25% of maternal deaths could be prevented if proper family planning could be done.
* Chronic diseases: Though there is a successful control in chronic diseases, still it comprises of 60% of the world’s total disease burden. Some of the chronic diseases are, stroke, cancer, heart disease, etc.
* Infectious diseases: The deadliest of the infectious diseases is HIV or AIDS. In the year 2006, nearly 2.9 million people died from this disease. 6% of all sub-Saharan African adults are infected with HIV, turning it the region with the world’s highest predominance of the disease. It is followed by Caribbean. Women and young people are more affected by HIV/AIDS.
The next deadliest disease is TB or tuberculosis, killing 2 million people around the world, in a year. The regions of Southeast Asia and Eastern Europe are affected by this disease the most.
An increasing number of people die each year from malaria, and the number is increasing steadily, causing 1 million deaths each year.
Today the world is stuck with health crisis. So, the scientists are paying utmost attention to the global health issues, to invent new vaccines and medicines. However, the developing countries have not been able to take advantage of these improvements and the development in health status has remained restricted to the richer countries only.
