Ensure healthy lives and promote well-being for all at all ages GOAL:3
On the morning of his 45th birthday, Pedro woke up feeling depressed and anxious what was supposedly a happy occasion was one step closer to inevitable death for Pedro. You see no one in Pedro’s family has ever surpassed the age of 50 to think of it Pedro doesn’t know anyone who has lived above 50 in Mozambique. as Pedro went into the
kitchen to see his three children and wife who had prepared a lovely breakfast for this day. The thought that in a few years he won’t be able to be next to his loved ones ever again broke his heart no father wishes to leave his children.
Mozambique is one of many countries that suffer from low life expectancy at birth due to poor healthcare in the country. Even if the treatment was availableit would be extremely expensive. The average person who lives in Mozambique like Pedro couldn’t afford treatment when needed. All over the country, people are dying early because treatment for simple diseases is not easily accessible.
This tragic occurrence leads to the early death of many people. Like Pedro, there are thousands of people who pray that the government will establish an effective well-trained healthcare system that is also affordable and accessible to everyone in the country.
A proper healthcare system will extend the lives of people like Pedro who wish to stay next to their loved ones for years to come without fear of death at an early age. For a health system to be truly effective it needs to be adequately supervised by the government along hiring trained professionals to ensure the success of the system.
strong regulations and close observation by governments are required so that hospitals and pharmacies don’t take advantage of the people.
If proper healthcare is made accessible to people, health expenditure will increase leading to an increase in life expectancy.
Everyone deserves to live a long healthy life!
In year 2000 we can see that the life expectancy at birth was an average of 48.95 years back then the current health expenditure(%of GDP) was on average 2.26
In year 2019 Mozambique Current health expenditure (%of GDP) became an average of 7.83 and obviously the life expectancy at birth increased to 60.85 years
PROBLEM: The lack of proper healthcare Leeds to Low life expectancy in less developed countries this means that people are dying at early ages Because they do not get access to early diagnosis ,timely treatments and resources to treat the disease.
PROBLEM EVIDENCE :Life expectancy depends on variables that are related to healthcare resources it is obvious That if we look at the current health expenditure(%GDP) that represents the level of resources c
hanneled to health relative uses of the different countries we can see that countries who spend less on health expenditure have a lower life expectancy and vice versa.
POTENTIAL SOLUTION: Proper access to healthcare is associated with lo
w risks of mortality meaning higher life expectancy. Providing access to healthcare and making prices of medication affordable is essential also it is important to focus on patient engagement and connection in order to treat the patient better
SOLUTION DETAILS:Government should work on lowering prices of prescription drugs so that they can be accessible to people who need them. Government must preserve the interests of its citizens by supplem
enting the market where there are gaps and regulate markets to improve efficiency and illuminate any unfairnessin the health sector this will require strong regulations and close observation by governments
SOLUTION VALIDATION:Through the graphs we can see valid evidence that countries that spend more on current healthcare expenditure tend to have higher life expectancy for example In Mozambique in year 2000 we can see that the life expectancy at birth was an average of 48.95 years back then the current health expenditure(%of GDP) was on average 2.26 when the current health expenditure started increasing so did the life expectancy in year 2019 Mozambique Current health expenditure (%of GDP) became an average of 7.83 and obviously the life expectancy at birth increased to 60.85 years meaning that The life expectancy improved 11.9 years this was also the case in a lot of other countries
RECOMMENDATION: For this to be possible it is recommended to recruit train and produce rise health workers because they are the heart of any strong healthcare system also establish affective surveillance on the healthcare industry (pharmacies and hospitals) by improving access to affordable Stable inclusive treatments
Refugees are as old as warfare, but it wasn’t until 1960 that the UN began to track refugees by their country of origin. People leaving their nations and migrating to other countries has increased at an alarming rate since 1960, by a total of more than 200 million displaced refugees around the world. Only this decade, registered nearly double the number of refugees around the world compared to the beginning of the last decade.
According to the UNHCR, over84 million people around the world have been forced to flee their homes. Among them are over26.6 million refugees, the highest population on record. 68% of the world’s refugees come from just 5 countries. Half of these refugees are children.
What is even more impactful, is that 85% of refugees are being hosted in developing countries. The international community, and in particular wealthy nations, are failing to meaningfully share the responsibility for protecting people who have fled their homes in search of safety. Instead, lower- and middle-income countries are doing much more than their fair share — hosting more than double the number of refugees that high-income countries are.
Therefore, the world and most importantly, the developed countries, urgently need a new global plan based on genuine international cooperation and a meaningful and fair sharing of responsibilities.
Developed countries should ease the pressure on internal policies and host refugees coming from developing countries with war or socio-economic and political crisis.
Wealthier countries should work to share the cost of protecting people who have left everything behind and fund humanitarian organizations for the assistance of refugees.
“Most air pollution comes from energy use and production,” says John Walke, director of the Clean Air Project which is part of the Climate and Clean Energy program at the National Resources Defense Council. In fact, according to the World Health Organization (WHO), it is estimated that each year, air pollution is the major cause of the death of nearly seven million people on Earth. Air pollution has several causes such as:
Burning fossil fuels
Industrial emissions
Wildfires
CO2 and other greenhouse gases emissions
According to the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences, it is estimated that deaths due to the devastated air quality will continue to rise till 2100 and the economic value of the health benefits was estimated to be between $50 and $380 for each ton of carbon dioxide emitted.
Ever since the industrial revolution, there was an outbreak of industries in all fields ranging from mechanical production to electrical to technical. All these productions relied mostly on heavy machinery that in fact, combusted energy sources (such as fuel, oil, diesel…) and in a complex series of chemical reactions, released gases. One of those gases is Carbon dioxide (CO2). CO2 by itself is not bad because it is a needed chemical in nature. However, CO2 levels in the air have been increasing drastically to the point that they have become one of the major sources in air pollution, according to MDPI.
Carbon Dioxide from electricity production:
According to the World Nuclear Association, almost 40% of the energy-related CO2 emissions are due to burning of the fossil fuels for electricity production. Because a huge part of electricity production depends on burning fuels, there will be a mass of CO2 emitted to the air. This in turn leads to high CO2 emissions, especially from the countries that depend completely on burning fuels to produce electricity. The visuals below demonstrate and prove that the regions that had the highest CO2 emissions from electricity and heat production in 2014 tended to have the highest air pollution rates. The Carbon dioxide emission rates were highest in the middle east, east Africa and east Asia compared to the low numbers of North America and Europe. The same former countries had the highest air pollution rates (PM2.5) compared to the latter. Therefore, we can conclude that the higher the dependency on fuel combustion for energy production, the higher the CO2 emission rates, the higher the air pollution rates. On the long run, this can have devastating effects on the nature, climate and humans.
What can be done?
After governments realized the devastating effects of the gaseous emissions on the air quality and on humans in general, several attempts were done, such as awareness programs among the youth, restrictive laws and advertising. However, these attempts tackled the tip of the iceberg of the problem. A solution is needed to solve the problem deep from within the roots, to prevent it from happening in the first place. Producing energy from renewables could be a potential solution. The most common renewable power technologies are through Solar, wind, biogas, geothermal, low-impact hydroelectricity and biomass. According to the Environmental Protection Agency, generating energy from renewable sources reduces air pollution, diversifies energy supply and creates economic development.
To reduce the gaseous emissions and air pollution, several countries tried to develop their technological and scientific knowledge of renewable energy production as saw a promise in using renewables, that could one day, be substituted for fuel combustion to produce energy. In fact, developed countries such as USA and the EU countries took serious initiatives to use renewable energy production. The below figures show that countries that increased their electrical energy production from renewable sources over the time period of 2005-2014 had the least air pollution rates in 2014. The EU countries and North America had the highest dependency on using renewables to produce electricity compared to the middle east, east Africa and east Asia and the former regions in turn had air pollution rates that are much lower.
Renewable energy production, therefore, is a clean energy source that can reduce Carbon dioxide emissions and in turn lead to a better, sustainable and a healthy planet that has a rich and high air quality.
The Sustainable Development Goal 3 of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development is to “ensure healthy lives and promoting well-being for all at all ages”.
However, many low- and middle-income countries are having higher mortality rate for infant and lower life expectancy in general compared to other higher income countries.
Infant mortality is the death of young children under the age of one. The infant mortality rate (IMR) is the number of infant deaths for every 1,000 live births.
The first map shows the IMR of most countries around the world. It changes by years. From the map, we can see the global IMR has decreased from 1990 to 2021 and is predicted to continue to decrease in the future However it’s still higher in low-income countries.
Infant Mortality Rate is an important indicator of the overall health of a society. It also reflects the social, economic, and environmental conditions in which children live. There are a number of causes of infant mortality that vary from country to country, including poor sanitation, poor water quality, malnutrition of the mother and infant, and inadequate prenatal and medical care.
Visualizing the data from the World Development Indicators (WDI) throughout different years shows clearly that there is inequality in health, clean resources and vaccination coverage as well.
One of the main reasons for the high IMR is the lack of vaccination, taking Measles as an example, Measles is a highly contagious, serious disease caused by a virus. Before the introduction of measles vaccine in 1963 and widespread vaccination, major epidemics occurred approximately every 2–3 years and measles caused an estimated 2.6 million deaths each year.
More than 140 000 people died from measles in 2018 (over 300 deaths a day) mostly children under the age of 5 years, despite the availability of a safe and effective vaccine.
Due to gaps in vaccination coverage, in high income regions of the world such as Western Europe, measles causes death in about 1 in 5000 cases, but as many as 1 in 100 will die in the poorest regions of the world.
Another important fact to focus on is the Health expenditure per capita which is the amount that each country spends on health, for both individual and collective services.
We notice that the low-income countries have the lowest rate compared the other countries such as US and Finland.
This prevents many women of the low-income countries from getting proper and adequate medical attention due to their inability to afford good care
This is also another reason for the high Infant mortality rate in these countries because they don’t give much importance and budget for the country health system
Recommendation:
There are different causes of infant mortality that vary from country to country, including poor sanitation, poor water quality, malnutrition of the mother and infant, Vaccination and inadequate prenatal and medical care. So, in order to reduce the rate, it’s necessary to enhance the standards of living in these countries on different levels:
Measles vaccination for children, combined with mass immunisation campaigns in countries with high case and death rates, are key public health strategies to reduce IMR
Improve life conditions by providing an access to a cleaner food and beverage.
Increasing the delivery services within health facilities
Health expenditure need be prioritized by laws: Countries that have prioritized policies on health-care expenditure and have high levels of health spending are those that have succeeded in lowering their infant mortality rates
Encourage NGOs and the other organization to create projects in these countries for employability purpose and providing solutions to the people’s needs.
Validation
Monitor the world development indicators (e.g., Infant mortality rate, access to clean food, immunization, GDP,, …) in such countries over the next period and see with how much and how these indicators changed after doing these solutions.
Findings/Recommendation
Reducing mortality rate may lead to Improving labor supply resulting in improved household income and economic well-being of families and communities.
Trying to reduce inequality between high- and low-income countries will empower and promote inclusive social and economic growth
Unavailability of electricity and cooking tools is prominent, especially in African countries. On the community level, this can be responsible for inadequate equipment in health care facilities. On the individual level, this causes hunger and reliance on combustion methods for cooking and heating which increases exposure to unhealthy air substances.
Evidence: infant mortality is the highest in African region while both access to electricity and technological tools for cooking is the lowest in these countries.
Solution:
– On the community level: Projects to electrify health care facilities especially emergency care (refrigerators for storing medicines and plasma, communication systems…).
– Individual level: projects to Increase accessibility to technological cooking tools.
Solution details:
-Projects to electrify health care facilities increase attraction and retention of health care practitioners in the African region, also ensure better provision of health services.
-Providing clean energy decreases reliance on combustion methods for cooking and heating, decreasing indoor air pollution.
-Ensuring provision of cooking tools optimizes cooking time and decreases various coping strategies and these may include the decreasing the frequency cooking of foods that take longer to cook such as beans or encouraging consumption of uncooked or semi cooked foods), decreasing malnutrition.
Validation:
More than 5 lives out of 100 lives are saved through providing better services including electricity and clean fuel for cooking for more than a year, according to Wang and Van der Klauuw, 2003.
Recommendations:
– The focus of energy programs should shift from supplying energy as a commodity to providing energy with a developmental goal, such as clean energy for child health or water and sanitation.
– Focus should be on identifying conditions under which affordable energy services creates gains in combating child mortality.
