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eases that afflict low-income countries. Rich nations should be sharing this knowledge and helping with the alleviation of preventable diseases by ensuring that public health and sanitation be provided for all, together with clean water, adequate housing, education, adequate food and health education. These measures would go a long way towards the elimination of diseases that currently afflict people in developing countries, just as they were successful in improving the health of European and American citizens in the nineteenth century.

 

Structural Causes of Poverty and Ill Health

 

It is clear that the crisis of global health is intimately related to the crisis of global poverty. However, whilst the direct causes of ill health in the developing world can be attributed to a lack of resources and poverty, if we delve deeper, we can state that a major source of poverty itself is the current structure of the global economic system. This understanding - that improving global health is impossible without addressing the wider political and economic causes of poverty - is central to an agenda for human development and social justice.

 

Debt and Structural Adjustment

 

Structural adjustment policies and high levels of debt owed by Southern countries to institutions in the North remain a key reason for worsening health outcomes in many developing countries. Following the oil crisis in the 1970s, Southern debt suddenly soared due to interest rate hikes and the devaluation of the US dollar. Many economies in the 1980s, collapsing under an unmanageable debt burden, were forced to enter into loan agreements with institutions such as the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank.

 

These loans were contingent upon the adoption of fiscal austerity measures and economic reforms, later commonly known as ‘structural adjustment programs' (SAPS). Under the rationale of attracting foreign investment through market liberalisation and downsizing the public sector, adjustment measures included the rapid privatisation of state industries, the removal of ‘barriers to trade' such as tariffs and quotas, and often led to social spending cuts in essential services such as education, health, housing, water and sanitation.

 

The human impact of structural adjustment has since become legendary; real wages fell by as much as 70 percent in some African countries in the 1980s, while the introduction of user fees for healthcare led to a catastrophic drop in usage of health services. Poverty and hunger rates considerably worsened in many indebted nations, health systems collapsed, children left school, and government-provided social services and safety nets were seriously undermined.

 

Structural adjustment also did little to curb the Southern debt crisis, which spiralled upwards by 400 percent t本论文由英语论文网提供整理，提供论文代写，英语论文代写，代写论文，代写英语论文，代写留学生论文，代写英文论文，留学生论文代写相关核心关键词搜索。