Jordan+Luber+WHO+Mali

Jordan Luber Mali World Health Organization Arundel High School Diseases of Poverty: Breaking the Cycle and Starting a New One

Diseases of poverty are infectious diseases, typically preventable, that tend to ravage impoverished populations for no other reasons than those which are a result of the impoverishment of the population. While these diseases are almost always preventable, they continue to kill millions, infect hundreds of millions, and affect billions each year, while also holding dozens of the world’s nations back in the third world. These diseases of poverty are both products and stimulators of the cycle of poverty that plagues the world, holding billions of the world’s population back in a form of medieval life that has no end in sight. Together with the nations of the world, Mali seeks a comprehensive and ambitious plan to target these diseases at their source—poverty--while moving on to their affects, the diseases themselves and the millions that are sickened (along with the millions more affected by the illnesses), eradicating these diseases of the world and bringing the forgotten half of the world into the modern, respectable, self-fulfilling, non-medieval light.

According to the UN, about 27% (2005) of the world’s population is impoverished, while about 14% of the world is hungry. Poverty and hunger lead to these diseases of poverty in many ways, all of which are catastrophic and deadly. When impoverished, there are a few symptoms that are almost always true, yet always bad, and often (as the millions affected and dead from diseases of poverty can testify too) deadly. When impoverished, people tend to have bad sanitary habits, poor nutrition, and an unhealthy environment. All of these symptoms lead to these devastating diseases, two of the most infamous are malaria and pertussis, which kill tens, perhaps hundreds, of millions each year. These diseases are curable, as are most diseases of poverty; however, due to impoverishment, these people are highly receptacle to them, and have no means by which to treat them, and they then die in large numbers as a result. These diseases of poverty part of a vicious cycle that they also help keep running, one in which poverty leads to vulnerability to these diseases, the diseases are caught, and money, time, and resources that are scarcely available and not to be spared are used, meanwhile people die and no or little work is done by the affected individuals. This cycle feeds itself only becoming more deadly and vicious, and it must stop.

The nation of Mali is personally connected very deeply, and painfully, to this cause, and wishes to help lead the fight, a fight that will triumph, against these diseases and their cycle. Mali believes that with the determination of the devastated nations along with the co-operation of our developed friends, this cycle can be targeted at its source, eliminated, and these diseases of poverty eradicated once and for all. As a nation that itself is devastated by these diseases, as well as seeing ourselves held back for decades by this vicious, almost-unbreakable cycle, Mali feels passionately that this needs to end, and the end will begin with the passing of a comprehensive, aggressive resolution that, with the help of all--affected or not--will break this unbreakable cycle.

Many nations feel the same pain Mali feels, has felt for decades, and will continue to feel if we do not act. Meanwhile, many already developed nations have the resources, money, and means to stop this. It is only a question of if they are willing. We know in their hearts they are, and together with the determination of the nations who are only developing, struggling to break the grip of this impoverished, disease-ridden monsterous cycle, this cycle can be broken. Working with the voluntary, tough, and what must be significant, efforts by the developed nations with the means, Mali, along with all other developing nations suffering from these diseases of poverty and poverty itself, seeks to ratify a comprehensive resolution, one sure to work, not because of obscene amount of dollars spent, but because of responsible spending targeted at the source of these problems. If we can concentrate on the source of this cycle, the poverty, we can work our way up to ending it, and therefore eradicating these diseases of poverty. With a program, supported and often funded on low-interest loans from developed nations but led by the developing nations themselves, the source of poverty will be attacked, through concentrated and responsible use of money, as well as resources and energy. While the source of poverty is neutralized and eventually, by beginning a new cycle, one of work, funding, investment, and hope, a new cycle of good economies, strong, developing, healthy diversified and stable economies, the infectious diseases will then be targeted, on two fronts. One front will focus on preventing these diseases form re-occurring: this includes breaking the poverty cycle and beginning a cycle of economic and social success, while also, among many other efforts, establish clean water wells, local clinics, responsible national, but local and non-corruptible, health agencies, health education, and bed netting. The second front will targeted at the diseases of poverty that have already struck, currently affecting millions: through the use, among other things, or local treatment clinics open to all, and for the time subsidized by the governments and their low-interest loans from developing nations, as well as medicine, shots, and readjustment programs to assimilate the once or currently still infected into society as positive, safe, stable (if not healthy) working, contributing citizens. These plans feed each other, will take little on behalf of anyone except mainly motivation, which no one is short of. They are realistic and comprehensive, and are capable of ending this.

Through these efforts, the cycle of poverty and the diseases of poverty that go along with the cycle, while also helping feed it, will be ended, attacked and eradicated at their source, from the ground up. Meanwhile, through a comprehensive plan that Mali is eager to finalize with fellow nations, both developing and developed, a new cycle will be started: one of prosperity, brother ship, and health.