POVERTY

Poverty as Public Health Issue



Poverty as Public Health Issue

Introduction

"A good life, it would be to live in peace, health, and love of his own, without being hungry (Tahiraj, 2009, 368)."

Hunger is an uncomfortable feeling in the stomach due to lack of food. Almost every human knows what hunger feels like and fortunately many people are easily able to stop their hunger by having food at their disposal. It is not about just putting food in the stomach, it is about living a healthy lifestyle, as well. Kids who are not getting proper nutrition tend to have physical and mental health effects. Often People living in poverty are willing to commit a crime in order to fulfil necessities of their life. When people are desperate to feed their families, they go for extreme measures to provide food to their families, and this is one of the major reasons behind the increase in criminal activities in developing countries (Billitteri, 2007, 721).

Poverty is a puzzling fact. There are two kinds of poverty, absolute, or lack of basic needs like food, water, education, information, technology and infant mortality and relative poverty, which is measured according to how poor we are in relation to others. There are many people lucky and blessed who are able to have food whenever they feel like having it, they are blessed to have such a wonderful and health life. At the same time, we also have bitter facts about poor people; they are not able to fulfil daily necessities of life (Thorogood, & Coombes, 2004, 72). Those people, families are not miles away from us, but they are right here among us. In developing countries, there are children, who we see every day out in the street, hungry with no warm clothes, and we are busy living our own lives. Hunger and poverty is an important issue that cannot be ignored anymore.

Public health is a discipline that depends on a set of methods, techniques and people are woven together to promote and protect the health from the point of prevention, I believe that this discipline is very analytical, but not only based on the scientific nor the human only if connecting these two areas to make an emphasis on what would be the promotion of health (Naidoo, & Wills, 2009, 115). But do not make the mistake of relating to preventive medicine, as it will be more individual level. In this paper, we are going to discuss health issues arising out of poverty and their importance in light of some public health programmes.

Public Health Issues

The researchers found that poverty and health are interrelated. Their ability to capture the quality of life and health of the poor depends on this approach. Thus, poor people remain under poverty chain and they face many health issues such as hunger, Malnutrition, Infectious diseases, clean water and sanitation, Infant mortality and maternal health, Violence arises due to lack of access to health and lack of education. It is an important health issue because many ...