Big Picture of Health

Everyone knows what it’s like to be sick—you feel tired and sad and you don’t have the energy to do very much at all. Now imagine if you felt this way all the time. It would be pretty hard to go to school and learn.

Keeping people healthy means making sure that everyone can learn how to keep from getting sick and see a doctor to get medicine when they need it—this way, kids can learn and feel good about themselves.

Half the kids who die before the age of five are killed by one of five illnesses: HIV/AIDS, diarrhea, malaria, measles and pneumonia. Mothers also need better care, since almost half a million women die each year while having a baby.

Better health means stopping these diseases and seeing that moms are healthy so that their babies have a chance to be healthy too.

Improving Health: We Can Do It Together

You’ve probably had quite a few stomachaches in your life. They hurt a lot, but you probably never thought you were going to die from one. That’s because in the developed world, we have clean water, nutritious food and medicine when we are sick.

Traveling Health Clinic helps Kenyans living in poverty stay healthy, but lots of people around the world don’t have these chances.

If someone in a developed country gets an upset stomach, it usually isn’t a big deal. But for a kid in a country like Ecuador, an upset stomach can lead to diarrhea, which can be very dangerous.

We have medicine and knowledge that could save thousands of lives every day. As people who care about making the world fair, it’s our job to help make people healthier all over the world.

With your help, a stomachache can be just a stomachache, no matter where you live.

Better health in the developing world is a big step toward helping people break out of poverty. Women and kids are most at risk for getting sick, so good health gives kids a chance to get ahead and moms the chance to take great care of their kids.

This way, the whole community can get ahead.

Health and the Millennium Development Goals: Targets We Can Meet

The two Millennium Development Goals that relate to health are:

Goal: Improve the Health of All Women Who Are About to Have a Baby

The Challenge

• Problems with pregnancy or childbirth are very dangerous for young women in the developing world. In fact, these problems cause more deaths than anything else in women around this age.
• In 2000, 529,000 women died during childbirth and 20-times more were seriously hurt or disabled.

Goal: Stop the Spread of HIV/AIDS, Malaria and Other Diseases

The Challenge

• At the end of 2006, almost 40 million people were living with HIV, the highest number of people ever.
• Sub-Saharan Africa is home to about two-thirds of all people living with HIV.

Causes: Why are So Many People Sick?

There are many causes for health issues in the developing world:

Knowledge

Many people don’t know how to protect themselves from diseases like HIV/AIDS or where to go to get help if they’re already sick. They can’t ask because it isn’t okay to talk about the disease in their communities.

Hunger

People can’t be healthy when they aren’t eating enough nutritious food. They have low energy, get sick easily and have trouble getting healthy again.

Water

Diseases that cause diarrhea, like cholera, are spread by dirty water. 1.8 million people die from these diseases each year.

These are a few of the root causes of health issues, but there are many more.

North America: In a Position to Help

People in the developed world are much healthier than people in developing countries. This is mostly because of poverty and education.

We’re able to spend more money than developing countries on helping people stay healthy and treating people who are already sick. We also have education programs—like phys-ed class in school—that teach us how to be our healthiest.

It’s a whole different story in other parts of the world. Sierra Leone spends $34 on health care for each person, each year. The United States spends $5,711 for each person. That’s a really big difference.

We can help people in developing countries be healthier. With development projects like clean water wells, traveling health clinics and special care for women who are going to have a baby, we can make a big difference.

Global Status: Where the World is Now

Major health problems like HIV/AIDS, pneumonia or problems for pregnant women happen all over the world. The difference is in the size of these problems. In parts of Africa, many people have HIV/AIDS, but in North America, very few people have it, and those who do can usually get life-saving drugs that can help them live for a long time. In the developing world, poor health is more common than good health—this should be the other way around!

Facts About Global Health:

• Every year, more than 500,000 women die while they’re pregnant or having a baby—this is almost one death every minute of every day.
• Every day, 8,000 people die of AIDS. This is about three million deaths each year.
• Only 10 percent of the world’s population lives in sub-Saharan Africa, but it is home to 64 percent of people living with HIV and 90 percent of kids under 15 living with the virus.
• Malaria kills more than one million people each year, with almost 90 percent of all cases in sub-Saharan Africa.
• Every year, 8.8 million people get tuberculosis (TB). Every day, 5,500 die from it—that’s one million deaths worldwide each year.

A Story You Should Hear about Health

Take Action for Health

There are many actions you can take to help make health better in the developing world. Try these as a start.