Poverty

Poverty as a huge problem of public health

In the article of Farmer et al (2006) we can see two main topics – the first one is the structural violence which was described by Johan Galtung during the 1960s :

´´ social structures—economic, political, legal, religious, and cultural—that stop individuals, groups, and societies from reaching their full potential´´ As I understood his thought this correctly we cannot treat poverty only as a matter of lack of money, but also as a restricted policies, religion, law or culture. If one billion of people on the whole world try to survive couple of days more because they are starving, it is a enormous problem which cannot be solve only by giving them money, because it can be so, that they don’t have proper infrastructure to use this money. The same will be with treatment or any interventions provided by physicians or public health experts to society – it could fail if they do not know the social aspects of chosen group - and this is a second topic – clinical medicine. Poverty means unfortunately that health level of poor people is much worse than the well-being wealthy person, because they just do not have enough or any money to visit a doctor when they are ill.

Used by writing:

*Galtung J (1969) Violence, peace and peaceresearch. J Peace Res 6:167–191.

*Dying for change. Poor people's experience of health and ill-health. (pdf) WHO & The World Bank. Complete report. (to the appropriate extent) You can also choose applicable parts in this Dying for change.

*Farmer, P., Nizeye, B., Stulac, S. & Keshavjee, S. 2006. Structural Violence and Clinical Medicine. (pdf) PLoS Medicine, Vol. 3(10).

*Poverty in Focus 2006. What is poverty? Concepts and measures. (pdf) (This publication contents many interesting articles on gender equality and poverty, read someone)

*Sanchez, P. & Swaminathan, M.S. 2005. Hunger in Africa: the link between unhealthy people and unhealthy soils. (pdf) The Lancet, Vol. 365, 442-444.