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Title: Poverty and Health In Developing Countries
Introduction
Poverty tends to be the main issue for United Human Development and Wold Human Organisation. Poverty usually reflects to the poor society in a country. Who are the poor? Obviously, rural dwellers where rural Asia and Africa have 60% to 80%, women constitute 70% of world poor, elderly, children and ethnic minorities. The degrees or magnitude of absolute poverty in developing countries, understand the meaning of absolute poverty by the number of people who are unable to command sufficient resources to satisfy basic needs. Poverty happens all over the world whether in low, middle or high income countries. However, our research is focus on developing countries. This is because many researches and studies have been done on developing countries. Poverty in the developed countries is not as serious as in developing countries. Poverty is associated with the undermining of a range of key human attributes, including health. Poor or low income society often has shorter life expectancy and high infant mortality rate. This is because the poor are exposed to greater personal and environmental health risks, are less well nourished, and are less able to access health care as well as the levels of private and public expenditures on health also have impact on the society health. Therefore they face a higher risk of illness, like HIV/AIDS. In reality, the consequences of poverty exist on a relative scale. The poorest of the poor, around the world, have the worst health. LITERATURE REVIEW
Edward believes that poverty and its consequence were preventable or amenable to control. George, M.D., M.P.H., F.A.P.H.A. (1965:1757) supports his arguments in his case study. George (1965) says that there are three basic points of view about poverty and health. Firstly, accept poverty as a practical goal that it can be eliminated. Secondly, poverty is such a tremendous drain on our society that it is to the advantage of the solvent, as well as the poor, that it can be eliminated. Lastly is poverty prevention rather than poverty relief. Poverty is a prime example of a vicious cycle, social as well as medical. The poor family of today is producing the poor families of tomorrow. George (1965) focuses specifically on the effects of poverty on health and some recommendations. We can act against poverty itself and raise the standard of living of poor. Ahmed and Christina(2009) shows that the results from its research in South Mediterranean show that life expectancy at birth (health) is strongly related to GDP per capita (wealth/poverty) and its square, implying that life expectancy at the level of this region of the world is directly under the effect of GDP per capita, and that an increase (decrease) of 1 leads to a net increase(decrease) of life expectancy by 0.45. This same measure of wealth also explains under-five mortality rate (health), and an increase (decrease) of GDP by 1 unit decreases(increases) this variant of mortality by 0.74 units. The obtained result also demonstrates the existence of a strong positive relationship between GDP and the number of physicians per 1,000 people. This clarifies the other results, where female adult mortality, maternal mortality ratio, life expectancy at birth and others. The results from its research also clearly show that improvements (decreases) in GDP are likely to generate better(lower) health conditions for both mothers and children in this region. While "the number of physicians" is positively related to GDP, any reduction(enhancement) due to other mechanisms like brain drain increases (decreases) the mortality rate. Philippe(2011) shows that children born in the slum settlements have higher mortality than those born outside slums, suggesting that delivery while residing in slum settlements have debilitating health consequences on children. The highest mortality rate was observed among slum-born children whose mothers were pregnant at the time of migration. Findings from this study suggest that there is need to address health inequities even within the so-called “marginalized groups.” In particular, targeted health policies toward children of recent migrants who are exposed to high health hazards in the slums could be developed in the light of the high degree of circular migration in these Communities (as shown by the UPHD team in another paper by Beguy et al.). Jean-Christophe (2006): all countries and areas (urban or rural) that are 15 countries in African selected where there are two are our sample that is Kenya and Nigeria, children from the poorest households stand greater risk to be undernourished, than their counterparts in the most privileged households socioeconomic inequalities in health have also shown evidence of higher heterogeneity of urban areas compared to rural settings, with the former harbouring pockets of severe poverty and deprivation, and exhibiting substantial concentrations of ill-health among the poor. However, Intra-urban differences in child malnutrition are larger than overall urban-rural differentials in child malnutrition. Poor societies face difficult obtaining fresh and safety water and environment. David (2003): Improve provision for water and sanitation able a very large drop in health burdens from water related infectious and parasitic diseases and some vector-borne diseases and also in premature death especially for infants and young children. It also increased income from less time off work from illness or from nursing sick family members and less expenditure on medicines and health care since better nutrition like less food lost to diarrhoea and intestinal worms, less time and physical effort needed in collecting water, lower overall costs for those who, prior to improved sup-plies, had to rely on expensive water vendors. Lack accesses to health care service are usually among low income citizen and geographic issue. Mahmud, David, Andre’s and Paul (2005): In Tanzania, all the wealth citizens living in low poverty concentration areas were found to have better health outcomes and service utilization rates than their counterparts living in high poverty concentration clusters. The facilities closest to the high poverty concentration areas had fewer doctors, medical equipment and drugs. Among the high poverty concentration clusters, the 10 communities with the best women’s body mass index (BMI) measures were found to have access to facilities with a greater availability of equipment and drugs than the 10 communities with the worst BMI measures. Likely similar to the above, Donald, Jane, Miquel, Carol and Thomas (1988) also stress the health care need and service to better health status among rural citizens in America that is not in my sample of research. But we get some idea from the author state that inequitable access is assumed to lead to inequitable health status, particularly for low-income groups where early comparisons between rural and urban areas of the country indicated that chronic conditions were more prevalent among the rural population. While the above author have touch on rural citizens and health, Raymond (2009) has shown, rural residence, particularly in smaller or more remote communities, increases one’s chances of having lower income and poorer health. The combination of rural residence, poverty and poor health is a triple whammy. To make matters worse, the rural poor who are in poor health may not even be noticed. Living in poverty is not conducive to good health. However, the study is on Canada that already been a developed country on the relationship between rural poverty and health but that maybe relevant to our sample from selected developing countries.
Knight& Maharaj (2005): KwaZulu-Natal in South Africa, the poor are less likely to be able to afford private services and are therefore more likely to use public ones. Conversely, those who earn more can afford to use private services. Another contributing factor may be that those with higher levels of education have different attitudes to public and private healthcare, which may influence their choice of healthcare provider. Just over 29 per cent of those who seek healthcare are choosing to use private services that they are required to pay considerably more than for similar public ones. However, private services are not only used by those who can afford to pay for them or by those who are covered by medical aid, but also by a large proportion of those who are poor and not covered by medical aid. This is a surprising condition which may be happening in KwaZulu-Natal in South Africa that many poor go private health service but these may be not happening or true in our sample of developing countries in Asia and Africa. Government spending from overall GDP is low although the citizen a suffering from diseases as the result of poverty in that country. Philip (2004): Many of the diseases suffered by the poorest populations are a direct consequence of poverty and can be either treated or prevented with existing technologies on the healthy. However, many governments of low and middle income countries...