Global Environmental Health and Sustainability

Running head: GLOBAL HEALTH AND SUSTAINABILITY
GLOBAL HEALTH AND SUSTAINIBILITY
Name of the Student
Name of the university
Author’s note

GLOBAL HEALTH AND SUSTAINABILITY1
Purpose
Poverty has a major impact on the social determinants of health of people around the
world. There is a vicious relationship between poverty and chances of acquiring disease as the
increase in one can directly affect the rate of the other. It has observed through different
literatures and reteach proposals that indicated towards the linkage of poverty with that of
emergence of infectious and deadly diseases that affected the morbidity and mortality related
rates of the population. This note will focus on poverty affecting social determinants of health in
developing countries such as Bangladesh and the way the communities, having less or no
resources struggle to achieve their right to quality healthcare.
Background
Social determinants of health are made up of surrounding environment in which people
are born, grow, work, learn, play and ages. These determinants are responsible for several
aspects in life such as health, functionality, quality of lifestyle and are associated with several
risks too (Penman-Aguilar et al. 2013). These social determinants dominate the physical,
emotional, economic wellbeing of individual in each social setting and hence, determine the
overall wellbeing of the people around. Poverty is alone the biggest social determinant of health
and is the biggest hurdle for the social and economic development of countries (Castañeda et al.
2015). Poverty can be of different types such as financial poverty, health literacy related poverty,
informational poverty that affect the health of people, as they are unable to access the healthcare
facility around them, or to good food and drinking water that deteriorate their health status
(Marmot et al. 2012). Financial poverty prevails in this case as they are unable to purchase or
afford medicines or physicians that can help them improve their health condition. However, lack

GLOBAL HEALTH AND SUSTAINABILITY2
of social support voice for their rights, lack of information and policies also affect the healthcare
needs of poor people (Benach et al. 2014). The rate of poverty is increasing in developing
countries and according to the reports of World Health Organization (2018), the average poverty
rate in developing countries are 65%, with 80% in Bangladesh and 70% in sub-Saharan
countries. Further the data from International Monetary Fund also determined that people
suffering from poverty in these countries are mostly deprived to quality healthcare. Therefore, in
this assignment, the topic of “Access to healthcare in developing countries” was chosen under
the theme of ‘Poverty and access to healthcare’ and Bangladesh was chosen as the country for
the assessments involved in this assignment.
Current status
The World Health Organization, active in Bangladesh determined that the organization is
still working on the equal distribution of opportunity to achieve quality healthcare in the country.
The engagement is determined to help in building and formulating different health-sector
interventions using different methodical studies that look into several factors that enhance the
health inequities related opportunities, keeping the non-economic factors such as cultural,
religious, and environmental aspects out of the health service (Marmot and Bell 2012). While
discussing the level of poverty in Bangladesh, the data of The World Bank should be mentioned.
In the latest research conducted by the World Bank (2018), it was mentioned that the poverty
rate in Bangladesh is around 25%, whereas the extreme poor people are in 13%. The rural
poverty is around 36% and the United Nation has set a target to eradicate the poverty from this
country by 2030. The rate of poverty also indicated to lack of healthcare as The Asian
Development Bank (2018) provided the fact that in 1000, 31 babies’ dies before their first
birthday. Health inequities include the health related disadvantages that create gaps in access to

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health care; disturbing the poor populations, the mainly Social shield in health covers less than
2% of the country’s inhabitants (WHO 2018). Health safety have an insignificant coverage and
have had little impact so far. A collection of social and cultural conditions impact upon health-
care-seeking behavior in Bangladesh. There remains a strong predilection to consult quack
doctors in the neighboring region, and to take on the traditional birth attendants in the home, for
childbirth. Such affinities give rise to risks relating to treatment outcomes and the childbirth
process. Consequently, maternal and neonatal mortality continues to remain distressingly high in
Bangladesh. There is a need to systematically examine the social, cultural and economic factors
that imposed on the health intervention outcomes, and influence inequities in access to affordable
medicines and health care. Besides that due to Rohingya crisis, more than 671,500 Rohingyas
have arrived in Bangladesh to save their life as refugees (Chowdhury et al. 2013). However, in
Bangladesh, they are also facing health related crisis. They are suffering from issues related to
food, water, quality healthcare and the risk of mass life loss is higher as they are in contact of
several infections, especially with diarrhea and typhoid fever which is a waterborne human
fecal contamination related infection affecting mostly children in the refugee community.
Therefore, in this assignment, poverty and access to healthcare will be witnessed through the
discussion of rohingyas, and common Bangladeshi citizens who are under the poverty line and
struggling to get their healthcare related human rights (Chowdhury et al. 2013).
Key considerations
According to Marmot and Bell (2012), poverty and healthcare are inextricably linked to
each other. It should be mentioned that the roots of poverty lies within the political, social and
economic injustices that causes millions of people around the world suffer from such issues. The
roots are so deep that it will take hundreds of years to make everything in favor of these million