Artikel dan Rencana
Artikel dan Rencana
Poverty - What
can nurses do?
A New Year's Message from the International Council of Nurses
If you ask someone to name the most
devastating disease today, chances are that the response, at least 90% of the
time, will be HIV/AIDS. But the truth is that poverty, not HIV, is the greatest
scourge we face. Forty million people are living with HIV/Aids and some 1.2
billion people living in extreme poverty; that is, on less than $1 a day. This
means they lack the basic necessities for a healthy life -- adequate food, water,
clothing, shelter and health care. Another 2.8 billion people are living on
less than $2 a day.
#1 Eradicating extreme poverty is
one of the United Nation’s Millennium Development Goals. The aim is to
reduce by half the number of people living in extreme poverty by 2015. It is
a huge challenge given the state of affairs in the world today and the fact
that poverty is rising rapidly in Europe and Central Asia, and continuing to
rise in Sub-Saharan Africa. In nearly every country of the world the gap between
rich and poor is widening.
We know that poverty denies people access to health, education and other means
to increase their income and to improve their quality of life.
#2 Living in poverty saps their energy,
dehumanises them, and creates a sense of helplessness and loss of control.
Poverty and poor health go hand-in-hand,
with the poor sharing an unequal burden of ill health. Poor people in every
country have worse health outcomes than those who are better off. The poorest
20 per cent of the world’s population die from nearly two-thirds of the
world’s communicable disease, maternal and perinatal mortality, and nutritional
deficiencies. 3 Without good health, a person’s potential to escape from
poverty is severely weakened.
What can we as nurses do? We know that investing in education, health care and sound social policy can improve health outcomes. We also know that health is an asset, thus promoting and protecting it must be a key concern. This means that we need to educate nurses about the determinants of health, about empowerment, and about working with communities and vulnerable groups to address their unique needs.
We can work to ensure the poor are treated with respect, and work to influence policies and programmes, ensuring they are designed with the poor and most vulnerable in mind. We can lobby for fair labour standards, safe work places, equal rights for women (who represent 70 per cent of the most poor), and lobby to ensure equity of access to health services.
Nurses are the most trusted of health
professions and can do much to work with and on behalf of poor people to ensure
that their voice is heard, they are included in decisions that concern them,
and that the inequalities of access, employment, services, gender, ethnicity
and race are addressed. Working side-by-side with clients, service providers,
community leaders, policy makers and politicians we can do our part to reduce
the plague of poverty.
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