Unfortunately, there are an abundance of problems around the world, and something needs to be done about them. With so many problems, it is hard to know how to approach them, and decide what needs to be done to resolve them. The first step is to prioritize the issues. The five issues are water quality, food scarcity, vector borne diseases, air quality, and obesity. In my opinion, that is the order of most important to least important. There are many reasons why water quality is the most important issue. For starters, water is essential for life. A person would die after three days of not having water. Water is a great thing if it is clean, but if it is not clean, it can carry many pathogens. 748 million people lack access to a clean source of water (UN). Humans are drinking water that could potentially contain life threatening diseases and human urine and feces. Water like that is not fit for anyone. It accounts for 3.7 percent of our global DALYS. Dirty water affects children more than adults because of children’s weak immune systems. 6.3 million children die each year from water borne diseases (UN). Most of these children die from dehydration caused by diarrhea. The children get the diarrhea from drinking dirty water. Giving people access to clean drinking water would greatly reduce the amount of deaths each year. Accessible clean drinking water is also very important because it would increase an areas economy. It would increase because women and children would spend less time gathering the water and they could do other things like start a small business. Last, clean drinking water is extremely important because areas with unsafe drinking water have higher rates of vector borne diseases (Who). Proving safe drinking water will reduce vector borne diseases. Without clean drinking water, it’s almost impossible to take steps to improve anything else. It is a basic necessity everyone needs access to. The next most important issue is food scarcity. Like water, food is essential for survival. People cannot survive very long without access to food. There is enough food on this planet to feed everyone, but it is unequally distributed. The developed world consumes a massive amount of food, and wastes a lot of it. In the developing world, people lack access to nutritious food. A family may have access to corn, but one cannot live off of a cord diet. They would miss out on a lot of essential nutrients. Around 842 million people are undernourished (UN). Under nutrition causes stunting in children. They can physically no longer grow, and some evidence even shows that children are mentally stunted. Around the world, more than 99 million children under the age of five do not receive the proper nutrients to grow (UN). A person who receives proper nutrients is going to be a lot healthier than one that does not. This would reduce the chance of disease and death in a population. One in every nine people are undernourished (UN). When people are hungry, it is hard to fix anything else going on in their environment because their priorities are set on getting their basic necessities for life. Vector borne disease is the next most important issue on the list of five issues in the world. A vector borne disease is a pathogen or parasite carried from one infected person to another. It is transmitted though a vector (WHO). 17 percent of the global burned of disease of all infectious disease comes from vector borne disease (WHO). Some very common vector borne diseases are malaria and lyme’s disease. Malaria kills hundreds of thousands of people annually. These diseases need to be tackled. Millions of people have died from vector borne diseases, and most of those deaths could have been prevented with medications or prevention methods. Vector borne disease accounts for 2.9 percent of the global DALYS. Something needs to be done about the prevalence of vector borne disease because the climate is changing, and that means these vectors will be able to live in more habitats affecting more people. Air quality is the second to last most important issue on the list. According to the EPA the air has been greatly improved in developed counties like the United States, because of regulations on harmful pollutants (EPA). This has greatly helped reduce the amount of people who develop pulmonary diseases. Developing countries such as China have horrible air quality issues, but they are addressing them and will probably adopt the US method of improving the air quality. Overall, the out door air quality is already improving, but something does need to be done about indoor air quality. It accounts for around .5 percent of the global DALYS. Most of the indoor air pollution comes from women cooking on open fires inside their homes. They use dung, wood, coal, and many other very harmful substances as fuel. The women are breathing in toxins, and the children are often with the women so they too breathe in the toxins. It causes a lot of respiratory disease, and it causes their lungs to look like the lungs of a smoker. No one should have to breath in toxins to provide for their families. Improving air quality will greatly improve the lives of many. The last major issue is obesity. This issue mainly affects developing countries, but is on the rise in low and middle-income countries (WHO). Obesity increases ones risk of heart disease, diabetes, and high blood pressure (Mayo). Obesity does lead to many other diseases that cause death, but with even the slightest weigh loss ones health can improve. Also, there are a lot of options out there to help those who are obese, like surgeries and medications (Mayo). For some, obesity is genetic and for others, they just consume more calories then needed. Eating a lot of fast foods and other unhealthy foods causes obesity, and some people can only afford these foods. Obesity is a problem that needs to be resolved, but in comparison to the others it is the least of our worries. These issues are only five the world faces. They all need to be addressed, but some are more important than others. Water quality is the most important followed by food scarcity, vector borne disease, air quality, and lastly obesity. It is naive to think these problems will go away in the next few years, but with a lot of work, the problems can be greatly reduced, and many lives can be saved. |
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In late October, there was an unpasteurized apple cider recalled in Canada. There was a strong possibility the apple cider contained E. coli O157:H7. The product was sold at the St. Jacobs Farmers Market. Also, a local grocery store recalled the cider they sold in stores. Luckily, Canada has a food inspection agency that detects foodborne outbreaks and identifies the cause of them. The contaminated product will likely not smell or appear to be spoiled, but if consumed, there will be many life threatening symptoms. The symptoms are nausea, vomiting, abdominal cramps, and watery or bloody diarrhea. In the worst cases, the consumer can have seizures, strokes, or even kidney failure, and they may need blood transfusions. It is terrifying the food we consume could kill us.
One would not associate apple cider with E. coli, but with meat industry growing, there has been a lot of runoff from cattle farms. This runoff can seep into the ground and be transpired into plants. It is possible the tree the apples grew on transpired contaminated water. The farmers could have also contaminated the apples by using manure that contains E. coli. There are many possible ways the apples could have become contaminated with E. coli. The meat industry has been causing a lot of contamination with other foods. Cows have been fed corn instead of grass, and this has increased the amount of E. coli in their stomachs. The mass production of cattle has also allowed for a lot of cows to be located in one area, and with a lot of them in one place, they can produce a lot of manure runoff. This runoff then contaminates crops in near by areas. The spread of diseases through farm and industry runoff is tearing many families apart. Children are losing parents, and parents are losing children. Something needs to be done to reduce the amount of deaths due to food contamination. There has been a tick found in the United States called the Lone Star tick. It was originally found in the Southwest and East parts of the United States, but it is spreading across the country. This tick is known for making people allergic to red meats. It is strange to think a tick could make someone allergic to a food they have been eating their entire lives. The ticks have a sugar in their mouths called alpha-gal, and this sugar is also found in red meats. Humans can normally ingest this sugar, but when a tick bites a human and the sugar enters the blood stream it sets off an immune reaction. This immune reaction causes humans to become allergic to red meats.
The allergic reactions are very puzzling to allergists because the reaction tends to happen hours after eating red meat instead of right away. Also, proteins typically cause allergic reactions, and the allergic reaction the Lone Star tick sets off is caused by a sugar, which is a carbohydrate. Allergists also do not know if the allergy is permanent. Some of the people show signs that the allergy is going away, but they do not want to risk eating red meat again. Unfortunately, if the patient does get rid of the allergy, it will come right back if another tick bites them (http://www.cbsnews.com/news/a-tick-bite-can-make-you-allergic-to-red-meat/). It is scary to think a tick has the capability to make people allergic to food. When I first heard of this tick it was not near the Midwest, so I wasn’t too concerned about it. Then, I heard it was spreading across the country. There are many reasons why this tick could be moving across the county, and climate change is one of them. The ticks started in the Southwest and Eastern parts of the states and it is now moving in the direction of the Midwest. The climate change is causing the Midwest to heat up, and with warming temperatures the tick can survive here. If the tick invades the Midwest, not only will humans be affected, but it might also harm the native tick population. Any change in the biodiversity can throw an ecosystem off. Lets just hope this tick stays out of the Midwest. Ahttp://www.medicalnewstoday.com/releases/283460.php).
ccording to medical news today, HIV/AIDS is a massive problem in developing countries; around 6.4 million people are infected with HIV in Africa. This number is sad because in 1990 WHO reported only 386 cases in South Africa. There has been an Antiretroviral (ART) developed, and this made the life expectancy of those suffering of AIDs raise to 60 years. This sounds like a major improvement, and it is, but in South Africa, the cost of treatment will be too much for their national health budget in just a few years. The number of people with HIV/AIDs is rising at a rate the budget cannot keep up with. It is said that prevention is key in reducing the number of people with HIV, and therefore reducing the economic pressures. Although we have had many developments in the HIV/AIDs field, it is predicted that it will remain a major problem in South Africa for many more generations (The enterovirus has been around for a very long time, and in the United States alone, 10 to 15 million people are infected by it yearly. The virus is most common in the late summer and early fall, and most people experience typical cold symptoms. There is a strain of the virus called D68, and recently, it has been sending children to hospitals. 472 children have been sent to the hospital, and most of the children have asthma or other breathing problems. The virus was found in four children that have died. It might also be linked to a neurological illness that has arisen in Colorado, Boston, and Michigan. It caused limb weakness, cranial nerve dysfunction, and abnormalities in spinal gray matter. Some children have even developed partial paralysis in their lower limbs. This virus can be potentially dangerous to children with breathing issues, and the best way to prevent it is to wash your hands thoroughly, make sure to take your asthma medication, avoid touching your face with dirty hands, and disinfect commonly used items(http://www.cnn.com/2014/10/01/health/enterovirus-68-death/index.html?hpt=he_c2).
In my environment bundle, we have been talking about how children living in poverty have high odds of developing asthma because of the amount of pollutants they are exposed to. If children with asthma are more likely to be sent to the hospital because of D68, then it would be reasonable to assume children in poverty are in greater danger. Since most families in poverty do not have enough money to pay for hospital bills, they might wait to take their child in to receive medical attention, increasing the severity of their case. Those that do take their child in to receive medical attention will be stuck paying bills with money they do not have, and they will be forced to live in poverty for even longer. The longer a family lives in poverty, the more stress they experience, raising their odds of chronic illnesses. This virus can do quite a bit of damage to a family. Pesticides, a substance or mixture that is intended to prevent, destroy, or repel any pest, are known to be harmful to human health(http://www.epa.gov/pesticides/about/index.htm). There have been recent studies done by researchers at the University of California that show that if a pregnant woman lives within a mile of an area treated with three different types of pesticides, her odds of having a child with autism spectrum disorder increases by two-thirds(http://thechart.blogs.cnn.com/2014/06/24/pesticide-exposure-during-pregnancy-may-increase-autism-risk/). Mothers that are further along in their pregnancy are more at risk. This is only one example of how the environment we live in can have huge effects on human health. Typically, those who live in the country think they are safe from these types of issues, but the farms near by might be causing us harm. There are pesticides that are not harmful to human health, and using these instead of the harmful ones could potentially be beneficial for the economy. There will be reduced costs on behavioral therapy, special schools, and doctor’s appointments. Obviously eradication of autism is not possible, but we can reduce the number of cases by not introducing harmful chemicals to our environment.
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