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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