Health Has Improved Globally—But Not for All
ACCORDING to The World Health Report 1998, published by the World Health Organization (WHO), there is a global trend toward healthier, longer life. The report lists some examples.
More people than ever before have access to sanitation facilities, safe water supplies, and minimum health care. In addition, most of the world’s children are now immunized against the six major childhood diseases.a This has contributed to a drop in the number of deaths among children. While 21 million children under age five died in 1955, that figure has dropped to about 10 million in 1997. Meanwhile, in several industrialized countries, in recent decades there has been a dramatic reduction in deaths caused by heart disease.
The report adds, however, that progress in health has been far from universal. HIV/AIDS continues to be a deadly menace. Unknown before 1981, AIDS has claimed an estimated 11.7 million lives since the epidemic began. And no relief is in sight. In 1996, 400,000 children under the age of 15 became infected with HIV. In 1997 the number of newly infected children in the same age group was nearly 600,000.
Poverty Still Dangerous to Health
Especially have the hundreds of millions of people trapped in poverty seen little health improvement. They live mainly in poor countries where the burdens of disease are heavy, the outlook is bleak, and life is short. Says Dr. Hiroshi Nakajima, former director general of WHO: “The gaps between the health status of rich and poor are at least as wide as they were half a century ago.” Regrettably, these gaps are even widening, says one WHO expert, because “developing countries are hit with a double blow. They deal with not only the emerging modern chronic diseases but the residual tropical diseases as well.”
Even so, progress is not beyond reach. In fact, many of the millions of premature deaths are already preventable. For instance, “at least 2 million children a year die from diseases for which there are vaccines,” says Dr. Nakajima. Arguing that the gap in the level of health between rich and poor must narrow, Dr. Nakajima adds: “It is time to realize that health is a global issue.” The world urgently needs “international partnerships for health, based on social justice, equity and solidarity.”
Although these partnerships may be long in coming, each nation can already do much to improve the health of its population, states The World Health Report 1998. How? By educating its people to develop “life skills and healthy lifestyles” that prevent or reduce disease. The WHO Constitution puts it this way: “Informed opinion and active cooperation on the part of the public are of the utmost importance in the improvement of health.”
[Footnote]
a These six childhood diseases are measles, poliomyelitis, tuberculosis, diphtheria, pertussis (whooping cough), and neonatal tetanus.