Importance of Sanitation

Water sanitation as we have known for many years and was demonstrated by the broad street pump and cholera outbreak many years ago in London, is essential to the health and well being of the community. The readings and videos for this week make one thing clear, far too many people in this world lack adequate sanitation. It is no wonder why children are sick and are forced to miss school when their water system is contaminated by their own human excrement. I’m sure as we all know, our case study, http://www.un.org/esa/sustdev/csd/csd13/documents/bground_2.pdf points out that “Access to safe drinking water is a basic human right and essential for achieving gender equality.” When women have to travel several hours to get water, and then several hours back as they carry the water barrels on their backs, they are deprived of any potential promise of an education, and are continually subjected to multiple health hazards. The lack of healthy water not only posses a health risk to the entire community, but these societal norm have caused grave gender inequalities. Good, healthy water is an essential building block for all other health and wellness concerns; therefore, knowing that good water sanitation is part of the MGD’s is a start to alleviating the burden some of these developing countries are facing.

Addiction and Mental Health

Due to the large negative stigma that comes along with mental health, many people would not often consider addictive behavior as a mental health concern. Although some societies have made it acceptable to consume large amounts of alcohol, the acceptance of such behaviors does not dismiss the fact that addiction is a serious issue in many societies. As we saw from our presentation last week on the mortality of men in the former USSR, drinking has been hammered in as a significant part of the culture. Imagine sitting at a table with one other friend and feeling compelled to finish an entire bottle of vodka in order to avoid being impolite. Does this remind you a little of those good ole’ college days. During my undergraduate degree, I went to a school that praised drinking, lots of it… at tailgates, at dorm dances, at the bars that would let anyone in with a fake id. My friends and I all took advantage of this new independence one often finds in college and loved every minute of it. Like the Russians, college students binge drink, and may think it rude to leave a bottle unfinished. However, for most college students this behavior ends when college ends (or possibly until a reunion with your college friends at the next season’s football game). For others, the behavior known to them as a good time in college haunts them for the rest of their lives. Liver damage, prolonged alcohol abuse, inability to simply be a social drinker, AA meetings… I had a friend in college once tell me that her dad (an alum from the same school) was in AA, he would travel all over the country for work and would attend meetings wherever he was. Apparently, he found fellow alumni at every AA meeting he went to around the country… scary hu? So my point is, when a society makes something socially acceptable it is not viewed as a mental health issue, but when something is viewed as crazy (Britney Spear shaving her head perhaps) the action is ostracized. Do we need to make anxiety disorders, personality disorders, psychotic disorders as acceptable as alcohol consumption in order to make them less stigmatized? Or do we need to add a harsher stigma to addictive behaviors to emphasize the need of recognizing them as mental health issues as well?

Agriculture, Malnutrition, and Obesity

Our case study this week focuses on the importance of agriculture for implementing and reaching the MDGs. It seems very effective to address the vast poverty and malnutrition problems as the true interrelated issues that they are. It also occurred to me, as I was reading the case study and watching this week’s videos that an increased and developed agriculture industry in the developing world, would not only allow the local communities to flourish, but could also help with the increased obesity trends. Fatty foods are mass produced, causing them to be less expensive than fresh produce, so if the agricultural sector of these developing nations could be opened wide enough, and use free trade to their benefit, an increased amount of healthful produce can result in lower fruits and vegetable prices around the world. As a result, this would not only address the issues of malnutrition by providing both food and profitable revenue for the developing communities, but focus could also be redirected for the populations with high obesity rates to adopt healthier lifestyles at a lower financial cost.