Health

Being healthy is one of the biggest priorities in our daily lives. If you ask somebody to name what is the most important in his life, you can be sure that he will probably mention health. Being unhealthy means that you can´t go to school, your work can´t be done at the right time and just feeling sick and dizzy isn´t very comfortable for anyone. Take aspirin and sweat if off is now a normal way how to get rid off any kind of sickness. We are vaccinated against serious diseases and the health care is still getting better and new ways how to cure or fight against various diseases are still being discovered. But even though we feel like fever, pneumonia or diarrhea can´t threaten us anymore, there are still places in the world where people die because of these illnesses.

Imagine that around 800 children under age five die every hour. That is around 18 000 children every day. Wait, you know what? Don´t imagine this, because this is reality. And these kids are usually from developing countries and they die because of very banal sicknesses that you could easily prevent. However, there is a problem. The problem is that people from developing countries usually don´t have such a good access to doctors, medicine, drugs or they simply lack knowledge about health. In the industrialized countries, people are used to be vaccinated against the serious diseases such as whooping cough, tetanus, diphtheria, measles or infantile paralysis, in the developing countries, there is no such a thing and children are left there to face any of these diseases on their own.

When mothers or families don´t know the basic hygiene practises or they don´t have access to clean drinking water, there is risk of children dying to diarrhea, in the tropical and humid areas can be cause of death malaria. Pregnant women also shouldn´t be forgotten and especially during childbirth, because if there are any complications, it can not only affect, but even kill child and mother. According to statistics, around 300 000 women die every year during childbirth. Therefore, it is very important for families to have access to drinking water, good health care and they know basic hygiene practises. For example for us, washing hands is something so common that sometimes we even forget to do it. But exactly this can prevent us from catching a serious sickness.

One of the most problematic illnesses is still AIDS/HIV. Even though it might seem that this is problem only of the developing countries, well, even children and the youths in countries such as the USA, Germany, Australia or the Czech republic can be affected by this. The most important thing is to be informed and know the ways how to treat yourself well and how to prevent this sickness. More than 17 million children have lost both or one of their parents due to AIDS in last few years. If one of the parents is HIV positive, there is a chance that their baby will be positive too. Thanks to proper health care, people with AIDS/HIV can live normal life and they live longer than it is used to be. 

However, there have been many improvements in last 15-20 years. Let´s remind them. The average annual mortality of children under age five was 9-10 million in 2000. Last year, in 2015, it was only 5-6 million deaths. Around 22% of deaths were caused by diarrhea, now diarrhea cause only 9% of deaths. More than half million women were dying during delivering child 15 years ago, last year, only around 250 000 women died while delivering child. Yes, I know, it is still a lot, but there has been improvement. 

We have only one health and we have to treat ourselves well. Even though we don´t feel threaten by fever, pneumonia or cough anymore, there are still parts of world where these sicknesses can cause one of the most difficult fight with life.

Sources: UNICEF, Red Cross