Global Health: The Impact of Chronic Poverty and Climate Change - Assignment Example

QUESTION 2 Good governance approaches for health has been underway in most parts of the world, although the investigations carried out by WHO indicate the uneven adoption of such governance across the world. Good governance for health is an approach that can significantly contribute to ensuring a new outlook required to ensure that governance for health moves forward through adoption of certain factors. These factors include positioning health, basing strategies on new metrics, institutionalizing government approach processes, ensuring inventive partnerships for societal approaches, and adopting a global outlook. With regards to positioning of health, the health and well-being of people should be the primary goal of a government and the society as a whole. Generally, good health is part of the overall goals of a society and is fundamental to human well-being, environmental protection, and social and economic development. It is a fundamental element of good governance and sustainable development. Although a number of modern constitutions entail a dedication to health, this dedication must be rendered practical in new ways so as to ensure human rights become the basis of governance for health: health is a familiar and common responsibility to everybody (International Rescue Committee, 26). For governments, governance for health is considered high level form of responsibility, and clear goals of investment should be adopted with regards to sectors of society and policy. This is vital in addressing the health determinants. Good governance also considers basing strategies on new metrics. That is, the society and the government as a whole must ensure that they are familiar with the intricate health dynamics and the health determinants in order to properly govern. All actors must show appreciation to the degree to which the quality of life is enhanced by good health. Generally, appreciation should be shown to the extent under which good health improves workforce productivity, elevates learning capacity, supports sustainable environment and habitats, strengthens communities and families, and adds to social inclusion, a decline to poverty reduction and security. They must also acknowledge the degree under which good health rely on social gradients, inequalities and multiple social determinants. Governance for health is particularly linked to risks’ management related to modernization and globalization. It needs equipping of the actors with the capacity and skills to identify and attend to cross-cutting problems like health (Foresti and Wild 4-5). To define the indicators for change and progress monitoring, sectors should consider working together. Through constant review, even in situations that policies work, nations improve their flexibility to unexpected change through identifying emerging concerns that impact the policy at an untimely stage. In addition, good governance should consider institutionalizing its approach processes. Actually, institutionalizing all the structures and processes of the government are needed to address power imbalances, support cross-sectoral problem-solving, and connect health and well-being. A significant cultural change and a suitable timetable are needed for these processes. The government departments’ functional organization hinders their capability to tackle cross-cutting problems. Agencies of the government need the budgetary instruments, leadership, pooling of resources, mandate, sustainable mechanisms, incentives, realistic time frames, and audits in order to collaboratively work on incorporated solutions. Coordination of policy-making can be done by governments through strategic plans, which embark on integrated responses, common goals, and elevated horizontal and vertical answerability across departments. This will comprise new reporting formats, for instance, measuring externalities amid sectors and amid transnational and national health impacts, which are subject to the broad public and external analysis. A key proposal related to this is the establishment of civil servants team at the heart of the government (a consequences’ department) which systematically deals with such like cross-cutting issues (Franci 178). Moreover, inventive partnerships for societal approaches should be adopted. Reason being, most current health issues could be resolved better through societal approaches, which include the private sector and the civil society in addition to the mass media (Foresti and Wild 3). Through working in cooperation with third parties in the private sector and the civil society, governments have been depicted as emptied –out: in command of regulating sectors where they no longer have expertise or control. However, through working in cooperation with third parties, governments have improved their authority, ensured their policies mirror local requirements, generated extra social capital, and received access to important resources like contacts of the third parties, legitimacy and expertise. Good governance must also exercise a global outlook. For instance, governance for health should incorporate all governance levels, from local to global. Often, health challenges require nations to work in cooperation to offer public goods. Public goods’ globalization through the elimination of political borders and combination of economies has resulted to the idea of regional and international public goods founded on national building blocks. Good governance should begin a process whereby policy-makers in various levels are put together so as to respond to inter-reliant challenges through using the cooperation amid the diverse levels of WHO. QUESTION 4 Over the last two decades approximately 200 million people have been stricken by hunger and chronic malnutrition prevalence has reduced from 40% to 26%. Despite this progress, the World Bank asserts that 1.2 billion people are still under the level of extreme poverty. In addition, as contended by “State of Food Insecurity in the World (SOFI 2014) report”, an approximate populace of 805 million experienced chronic starvation more so from 2012 to 2014 (Lampis and Arabella 25). One of the major effects of climate change is the high probability of elevation of malnutrition and food insecurity. Generally, with food insecurity and malnutrition, chronic poverty easily prevails. One key impact of climate change on nutrition and food security is the increased risk of hunger (Rapley 3). Under-nutrition and risk of hunger are aggravated by climate change as evident in N. Africa (Ramin 885), for instance, extreme weather events. Changes in climate elevate the intensity and frequency of disasters such as floods, storms, and drought. This adversely impacts on food security and livelihoods. Disasters related to climate can potentially destroy key community assets, crops, and critical infrastructure resulting to a deterioration of livelihoods and aggravating poverty. In addition, as a result of gradual and long-term climate risks, sea-level rises thereby affecting the livelihoods in river deltas and coastal areas. Speeded up glacial melt also significantly influence the reliability and quantity of available water and alter drought and flooding patterns. Generally, changes in climate affect all extents of nutrition and food security. For instance, change in climate already impacts on the production of certain staple crops, and this change threatens to elevate this situation in the future. Higher temperatures resulting from climate change will significantly affect yields while alterations in rainfall could impact the quality and quantity of crops. Also, accessibility to food is affected. For example, in some regions, climate change could probably elevate the prices of staple crops. For vulnerable individuals, lower agricultural output can imply lower income. The poorest people, under these conditions would be forced to sacrifice extra income to meet nutritional needs. Further, climate change affects nutrition and food security through affecting food utilization and generally nutrition. Often, risks related to climate affect calorie intake, predominantly in regions where long-term food insecurity is already a problem. Alterations in conditions of climate could also result to a vicious hunger and disease cycle. Also, climate change is likely to affect nutrition through related effects on health, dietary diversity, food security, and care practices. To properly understand the impact of climate change, it would be important to consider certain key facts about food security during climate change. For instance, the threat of food insecurity hence poverty is likely to be multiplied by climate change. The risk of hunger is expected to elevate by 10-20% by 2050 and malnutrition in children is expected to increase by 20% compared to a scenario of no-climate change. Moreover, in a changing climate, achieving food security requires considerable elevations in food production, as well as enhanced access to sufficient nutritious food, and abilities to deal with the risks that climate change poses. Furthermore, assistance must be offered to governments in improving food access and production, enhancing social protection systems, and enhancing their capacity to disaster preparedness and response. Also, the processes related to community-based development should be focused on so as to enable the most vulnerable and poorest people build climate resilient and sustainable livelihoods and eradicate food insecurity and chronic poverty. Most importantly, the humanitarian community should always be prepared for extreme weather occurrences and ensuring protection for individuals already food insecure through strengthening both crisis prevention and crisis response (Rapley 2-3). Generally, climate change poses an exceptional challenge to the efforts made in hunger and poverty eradication. For the purpose of meeting the increasing demand for nutrition and food security under increasingly complex conditions of climate and in circumstances of diminishing resources, the world should immediately try to embrace a two-fold approach. First, the world should support and invest in the development of resilient, sustainable and efficient systems of food production. Second, the world should advance access to sufficient food and nutrition through enhancing the safety nets and social protection systems at risk and most vulnerable communities and populations (Dowling and Chin-Fang 56). QUESTION 5 Global warming combined with growing urbanization is resulting into several disasters. According to the World Disaster Report there is likely to be an elevation in extreme conditions of weather in the future, increasingly posing a risk for urban dwellers. Actually, in the current world more people tend to dwell in bigger cities than the countryside. Approximately 3.5 billion people live in cities, and 3.4 billion people live in rural areas. About 2.6 billion people living in cities are in developing countries, and approximately 1 billion of these people illegally live in slums. Unfortunately, people living in slums are more vulnerable to disasters since they are surrounded by poor infrastructure, lack of clean drinking water and sanitary facilities, and the insecure status of being a slum dweller (Ramin). In the case of disaster occurrence in poor cities, more than 1 billion people face the risk that results from disasters. In Kenya, for instance, child mortality is sixteen times higher than child mortality in Australia, even without the existence of a disaster. Despite this, urbanization is still dramatically advancing. Four decades ago only 75 cities sheltered more than 1 million inhabitants. Now, the number of such cities has dramatically increased to 450 (Buttenheim and Asch 581). Generally, climate change is increasingly playing a key role in occurrence of natural disasters. The number of disasters resulting from natural occurrences (volcanic eruptions, earthquakes, storms) or as a result of epidemics has been fairly constant. However, over the past decade, the number of disasters resulting from global warming has had a dramatic increase. Actually, most victims already are affected by climate change related disasters (Rapley 2). The rapid increase in the number of city inhabitants and urban landscapes is elevating the susceptibility of the world to natural disasters. The unprecedented entry of people into cities across the developing nations is resulting to a massive elevation of the populations living in regions that have high susceptibility to natural disasters. Every day, approximately 180,000 people migrate to cities. About 18% of the houses in urban regions are non-permanent or are considered to be slums, which are predominantly vulnerable to the effect of severe natural disasters. Most of the largest cities in the world are located in areas prone to floods, earthquake, and storms, and the development of urban land is increasingly causing the degradation and possibly complete damage of natural barriers such as mangroves, swamps and wetlands (Few et al 16). Therefore, greater focus must be put on ensuring that people are prepared for the possibility of the occurrence of a natural disaster. Also, a key action to be taken by communities should be building disaster resilience as opposed to the concentration of principally on reactive relief programs on response to occurrence of disaster after it has actually occurred. Often, urban settings are a key determinant of health. Currently, several urban areas are burdened and face a high probability of being faced by extreme threats of infectious diseases elevated by poor conditions of living, and non-communicable diseases like diabetes, heart disease, and cancers. Also, urban areas are faced by risk of conditions resulting from tobacco use, excessive consumption of alcohol, physical inactivity, unhealthy diets, accidents, violence and crime, road accidents, and injuries. These are as a result of complex interaction amid various health determinants including insufficient or poor infrastructure and services, which predominantly affect the health status of the poor population and slum dwellers. The working and living conditions differ extensively within and amid urban areas across the globe and are the key causes of poor health and diseases (Bebbington 31). Works Cited Bebbington Anthony. Poverty Reduction and Policy Regimes Thematic Paper Social Movements and Poverty in Developing Countries. Civil Society and Social Movements Programme Paper Number 32. 2010. Buttenheim, Alison and Asch David. Behavioral Economics: The Key to Closing the Gap on Maternal, Newborn and Child Survival for Millennium Development Goals 4 and 5. Springer Science+Business Media, LLC. 2012. Dowling, Jim, M, and Chin-Fang Yap. Chronic Poverty in Asia: Causes, Consequences and Policies. Singapore: World Scientific, 2009. Print. Few, Roger, Ahern Mike, Matthies Franziska and Kovats Sari. Floods, health and climate change: a strategic review. Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research. 2004. Foresti, Marta and Wild Leni. Public services at the crossroads. Ten years after the World Development Report 2004: reflections on the past decade and implications for the future. WDR 2004 anniversary conference, 28 February - 1 March World Bank, Washington DC. Franci Kebede. Global Health Disparities: Closing the Gap Through Good Governance. London: Oxford University Press. 2011. International Rescue Committee. Local Accountability in Service Delivery - The Tuungane Community Scorecard Approach. Guillaume Labrecque. 2014 Lampis Andrea and Fraser Arabella. The impact of climate change on urban settlements in Columbia. Nairobi: UN-HABITAT, 2012. Ramin, Brodie. "Slums, climate change and human health in sub-Saharan Africa." Bulletin of the World Health Organization 87. (Dec. 2009): 885-964. Web. 9 June 2015. Rapley Chris. The health impacts of climate change. Department of Earth Sciences, University College London. 2012. Read More