Issues With The Recent Infant Mortality Rate In China

In a recent article on www.trust.org it is said that in China, overall infant mortality has seen a sharp decline in recent years. This is due to the fact that in recent years the Chinese government has pushed for women to give birth in hospitals as opposed to at home. Though this is an improvement in the aggregate data, the decompressed data show is showing a different story. Though the overall infant mortality rate has dropped, the mortality rate is still alarmingly high for infant girls. These steps that the Chinese government has made are indeed an improvement, but there are still far greater issues at hand that the Chinese government is not addressing. In order to truly improve China’s infamously high mortality rate, it is necessary that the issue of male favoritism in Chinese society be addressed, because the rate at which infant girls are dying in China, despite this recent improvement is still alarming. China’s population is already extremely lacking in women, and unless the government takes some major steps to try and turn this trend around, they will have a serious issue on their hands in the next twenty years or so.

http://www.trust.org/alertnet/news/china-newborn-baby-deaths-fall-with-improved-healthcare/

The TRAP Approach

In a recent article published on guardian.co.uk it is discussed that the international community has put AIDS and HIV prevention on the forefront of international health concerns. The international health community has put focus on a program called TRAP (Treatment As Prevention) to help curb the spread of the virus. This new approach to AIDS and HIV prevention has shown to be very effective for heterosexual couples, showing almost 100% effectiveness. With aggregate data showing a decline in HIV/AIDS over the past 15 years, but the decompressed data showing a different story in developing countries, TRAP will, in all likelihood, curb the uneven distribution of HIV/AIDS infections rates, so that both the aggregate and decompressed data show a decline in infection. This new prevention method, with the increased funding by developed countries around the world will be attempting to get more than 9 million people on the TRAP treatment by 2015, which will bring the number of people receiving some form of treatment for HIV/AIDS all the way to 15 million. This is a bold new step in trying to irradiate the devastating HIV/AIDS virus that has claimed more than 25 million lives since it was first identified.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/global-development/poverty-matters/2011/aug/05/aids-treatment-funding

Livestock Taking Lives

Today, while browsing Mother Jones's website, I stumbled upon an article discussing a discovery made by researchers from New Zealand, which in many areas is deeply impoverished, showing that in an overwhelming amount of cases, kids raised on livestock farms, in particular farms that raise chicken, unfortunately end up with various blood cancers such as leukemia and lymphoma at some time during their lives at a far higher rate that people who were not in the same living situations. And since in the overwhelming amount of these cases, these children come from impoverished families with living conditions that often leave them in situations that result in these children consistently commingling with the animals exposing them to their waste and other viruses that livestock can cary. It causes me to dispair about how many different ways impoverished children are unavoidably exposed to so many harmful situations. It seems that in developing countries, there is no way to escape the unavoidable fate of poor health, unless someone can step in, and in some way, help pull them out of these conditions to give at least some of these children a fighting chance.






http://motherjones.com/blue-marble/2011/07/chickens-cancer