Gap between Rich countries and Poor countries of Health Condition result from Unequal Food Distribution and Health Service – Chaewook Lee

What is poverty? There are many ways to  interpret the definition of  poverty. Some define poverty as not having enough time, and others define it as not having enough money. Poverty is  defined differently based on one’s perspective. In this presentation, I would like to focus on poverty that results from unequal distribution of food and health services that can be  improved by sending aid to impoverished countries.

There is a wide disparity of food intake between people who live in affluent countries vs those who live in impoverished countries due to unequal food distribution. If someone is born in an affluent country, they will have less trouble getting food. But if someone is born in a poor country, they will have difficulties getting clean water and nutritious food.

We need to realize that one meal for someone could be a day’s worth of food for someone else, and that the amount of food waste from our houses could be a valuable meal for someone else.

On Earth there are over 200 countries and over 7 billion people, but not all of them are getting the same nutrients. In some countries, people can eat enough or a lot and throw away food, while in other countries, people struggle to eat only one meal a day. Why does this situation still happen?

According to Feeding America, the average meal is 1.2 pounds of food, which means if you eat 3 meals, you will take in 3.6 pounds of food per day.  If we include snacks, the average people eats around 4 pounds of food per day. That means four to eight pounds of food per a person per day  is more than enough. Keep in mind that this is an estimate, and there are some people who need more nutrition, so they would need to eat more food. According to the United Nations, however, around one third of food produced for human consumption is lost or wasted globally. This amounts to approximately 2.6 trillion pounds per year, worth approximately $1 trillion in US dollars.

Additionally, according to World Food Programme, all the food produced but never eaten would be sufficient to feed two billion people, which  is more than twice the number of undernourished people across the world.

2.6 Trillion Pounds ÷4 Pounds ×365 days= 1,780,821,917

In addition to Food Distribution, inequalities of health service is another challenge we need to look at. It is not difficult for you to find some video about people who really need better health services. They need more health care workers, medicine etc. I can’t forget one video in which a child was dying with no treatment, and I remembered the doctor said, “If we have a one dollar medicine, we can save him.” How could this happen in the twenty-first century? I couldn’t believe my eyes when I watched this video because for some people, it is considered mundane to go see a doctor and be prescribed medication.

According to WHO, children living in certain countries that do have not good healthcare infrastructures are 14 times more likely to die before the age of five.  

Healthcare Access and Quality Index(HAQ) is one of the most useful index when we want to compare health service inequalities. Even though many countries have good HAQ index, there are still a few countries where it is so hard to get access to healthcare workers and take medicine that people living there couldn’t survive illnesses. However, illnesses can be cured in the countries that have high HAQ index.

When it comes to these food and healthcare service problems, I believe that there must be something we can do. It is time to make global supports for helping those who is not able to reach enough food and healthcare services, and to reduce global inequalities of nutrition and medication by sharing surplus items. In addition to supporting and sharing the items with people who live in poor surroundings, I think we would have to make global regulations to mitigate this kind of imbalance to make all members in the world are able to pay attention to resolving the problems we’ve facing as if we made Carbon Credit to decrease greenhouse gas emissions.