Diarrheol Disease in Haiti Essay Example

live in the poorest areas. The majority of the population is either unemployed and/or living below the poverty line4. This level of poverty equates to the inability to provide safe living conditions for children which leads to their demise. The lack of access to suitable water and sanitation, lack of education about diarrhoeal disease and malnutrition, and severe poverty has further extended the continuance of this epidemic.

What are the sources of diarrhoeal disease and malnutrition in Haiti?

Haiti is the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere.

More than two-thirds of the population is either unemployed or underemployed and 80% of the population lives below the poverty line4. These who are the poorest do not have access to sanitary water sources or the resources needed to make the unsafe water they can access potable. The health system in this country is neither adequately accessible nor adequately funded. Currently, our government is only spending $71 per person on health care1.

Approximately 40-60% of the population receives care from the current health system in place. Further, only about 50% of Haitian children are completely vaccinated1. Another issue source for the problem we face is education. About 52% of adult women cannot read or write3. This greatly affects children as they usually spend most of their time with their mothers leaving them susceptible to being given unsafe drinking water as well as harmfully cooked food from dirty hands.

The lack of education on water quality and sanitation paired with the inability to afford the resources needed to clean the water has caused this problem to persist among our children.What are the economic and social consequences of diarrhoeal disease and malnutrition in Haiti? It

is estimated that eighty of every thousand children under the age of five will die. Roughly ten of each child that dies does so because of diarrhoeal disease while about seven will die of malnutrition. This puts a great strain on our economy as it greatly reduces our future workforce.

Further, adults that have children who have developed these conditions will have a greater responsibility to provide health care and safe foods which may result in malnutrition of themselves.This will cause decreased productivity as adults will be spending more time caring for their children and themselves. The high rate of these health problems are a direct result of the poverty level. The poverty level is worsened by the chronic disease so a rather vicious cycle has been created.

Recommendations

Currently in Haiti we spend 6. 2% of GDP on health services1.

This amount needs to be greatly increased in order to provide our population with safe water and sanitation. We need to educate our people on cost-effective ways to sanitize the water they have and prevent it from becoming recontaminated.Research has shown that boiling water safest way to sanitize unsafe water5. Our people would only need to boil the water they have for 3-5 minutes to make it safe for drinking, cooking, washing dishes, and bathing.

Our government needs to provide monetary aid so that our people may be able to purchase the charcoal needed to boil their water on. If we cannot provide aid so that our people can boil their water, the next safest measure is to provide bleach. One teaspoon of bleach can purify ten gallons of water5. This would greatly cut down the amount of unsafe

drinking water our people consume.Sanitation is another factor that we need to address.

Currently our sanitation levels are dismal. This creates the possibility of safe drinking water being contaminated by solid and runoff waste. We need to invest in water stations that are located in places that are safe from possible contamination. Further, we need to develop more rural water stations so that more of our people can access suitable water.

I feel that with the actions described we can begin to eradicate the problem of diarrhoeal disease and malnutrition among our people.

Notes

1. The World Health Organization. Haiti Country Page. Retrived June 29, 2008 from  http://www. who.int/countries/hti/en
2. UNICEF. Diarrhoeal Disease. Retrived July 1, 2008 from http://childinfo. org/diarrhoea.html
3. United Nations Population Fund. The State of the World Population 2003. (New York: UNFPA, 2003).
4. CIA Factbook. Haiti. Retrived July 1, 2008 from https://www. cia. gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/geos. ha. html
5. Washington State Department of Health. Purifying Household Water. Retrived July 2, 2008 from http://www. doh. wa. gov/phepr/handbook/purify.htm