We all know about the social problems that plague our society today. From issues such as juvenile delinquency, violence and crime, drug abuse, alcohol and pornography addictions, these issues are pertinent in our society today. However most of these social problems have correction centers, and rehab clinics to help straighten out troubled individuals and help put their feet back on the road. With a strong motivation and willpower, coupled with constant support, these individuals have a very good chance of turning over a new leaf and getting their lives back.
Sadly the same can’t be said about poverty. Lets forget about the homeless beggar that approaches you for spare change while you’re having your lunch in a restaurant. Lets not think about the stories we read in the newspaper about families struggling to make a living for a minute here. Lets not think about orphanage homes that are under resourced temporarily.
Zoom out from your current local societies and take a broader look. Everyday roughly 25,000 people die because of hunger or a hunger related disease. Over 2 million people lose their lives to AIDS each year, the statistics for AIDS is morbid : Roughly 1 person dies because of AIDS every 30 seconds. Poor sanitation and hygine leads to millions losing their lives each year to diarrhea related diseases, most of them being children. Tuberculosis, said to be the diseases that has killed the most number of people in the history of mankind claims about 1.5 million lives each year. Throw in Pneumonia and malaria into the statistical report, and you have roughly over 3 million people losing their lives each year to these two deadly disease.
There are roughly 800 million people with empty stomachs each day. Every time an adult dies because of AIDS in Africa or any other poor and famished nation, they leave behind a huge responsibility – their children. With the death of their parents, it’s these children who restart the poverty cycle. Simply because of inaccessibility to clean water, the most basic resource, thousands of innocent lives are lost.
Because families are unable to afford bed nets to ward of malaria-carrying mosquitoes and obtain anti-malaria drugs, they lose their lives to an otherwise-preventable disease.
It’s sad isn’t it? Yes we know about those diseases, we probably would have heard about some relative of ours being admitted to the hospital because of pneumonia or malaria or diarrhea and within a week or two, they’re discharged, well recovered from the disease. While we have modern health care, what about those who are under privileged? What about those innocent lives that are lost because they can’t get clean water? Or the hapeless child wandering in the famish surrounding wondering where her parents are, not knowing that they’ve lost their lives to AIDS?
The truth is we’re not painting a doomsday picture. We’re not imagining a “what-if” scenario. This is the stark reality that you and I live in. This is happening to our world right now as we read this. This is the world’s biggest plague, and it’s affecting people in ways unimaginable.
The purpose of this entry is to open eyes and touch hearts. I will admit that before writing this, I myself didn’t know how bad poverty was affecting the lives of others until I did my own research. The numbers shocked me, because I thought there are countries out there that are already helping out. But clearly it hasn’t been enough. The poor still needs more aid than ever, and rightly so.
So I urge you to read up more, educate yourself. The One campaign website, which aims at reducing poverty and hunger states that knowledge is power” and with knowledge you can be empowered to do something, to make a change.
To get you started I’ve added a few websites:
- Poverty.com (http://www.poverty.com)
- World Food Programme (http://www.wfp.org)
- Make Poverty History (http://makepovertyhistory.org)
- The ONE Campaign (http://one.org)
