Poverty Speech

The issue of poverty is an issue that has been around for decades but yet, it still hasn’t been addressed correctly or efficiently. It’s a serious issue that affects a large amount being 1.4 billion people globally, many of these people living on less than $1.25 every day. It’s estimated that about 25,000 people die every day of hunger or hunger-related causes, according to the United Nations. This is one person every three and a half seconds, and unfortunately it’s mostly children that die to these preventable causes, and its estimated that approximately 11 million children living in poverty will die before their 5th birthday. Poverty is the lack or absence of what we would call the essentials. These include: * Clean Water

* Food
* Shelter
* Nutrition
* Health Care
* Education

Everyday things that we take for granted.  The sad thing is that there is plenty of food in the world for everyone. The problem is that hungry people are trapped in severe poverty. They lack the money to buy enough food to nourish themselves. Being constantly malnourished, they become weaker and often sick. But hunger isn’t their only problem; they are suffering problems such as; AIDS – Which is now the second largest wide spread disease in history, second to the Black Death. AIDS kills over 2 million people a year and once again it’s mainly children who make up the death toll. Children are often infected with the HIV virus during pregnancy or through breast feeding. Pneumonia – and other forms of acute respiratory infection (ARI) kill more than 2 million children alone each year in poor countries.

Pneumonia is contagious and is commonly transmitted when an infected person coughs or sneezes small droplets that contain the germ into the air. If treated, pneumonia usually is not fatal. Diarrhea – diseases kill about 1.6 million people each year, almost all of them children. Diarrhea is most often a result of unclean water, unsafe sanitation, or poor hygiene. Strong, healthy people can recover from diarrhea in a few hours or days at most. However, individuals weakened by malnutrition or sickness often cannot recover and start losing large amounts of fluids and salts.

Without treatment, this may continue until they actually die of dehydration. Children become dehydrated faster than adults Malaria – Over a million people die from malaria each year and many millions more are seriously weakened by it. Malaria is spread by mosquitoes. One bite from an infected mosquito can mean weeks of fever and exhaustion, preventing children from going to school and adults from working to provide for their families. Close to 90% of malaria cases occur in Africa. At the present time there are 8 goals in place for developed countries that wish to be involved. These goals are aimed to help reduce and even get rid of Extreme poverty before 2015. These goals include: 1. Eradicate extreme poverty and hunger

2. Achieve Universal primary education
3. Promote gender equality and empower women
4. Reduce child mortality
5. Improve maternal health
6. Combat HIV/AIDS, malaria and other diseases
7. Ensure environmental sustainability
8. Develop a global partnership for development
But we must also realize how far we have come in getting rid of poverty, here are some statistics: progress since 1990:
* 280 million fewer people living in extreme poverty
* 40 million more children in school
* 3 million more children survive each year
* 2 million people now receive HIV/AIDS treatment.

Removing poverty from today’s world is possible, but only with the help and aid of governments globally, we need to come together to help those who can’t help themselves. I believe that eradicating poverty can and will happen in my lifetime.