Читать книгу The State of the World Atlas [ff] - Dan Smith - Страница 14

Living and dying

with HIV/AIDS

Adults and children

1990–2010

new HIV Infections

AIDS-related deaths

people

4m

3.5m

3m

2,5m

2m

1,5m

1m

0.5m

0

1990

1995

2000

2005

2010

Many societies do not generate the wealth required to be able to look

after the health of the people on a more or less fair basis. Others have the

resources but the political and social will to do so is lacking. Challengingly,

even where and when the resources are available and are deployed to

provide health care for all, that is no guarantee that our patterns of

behaviour will be healthy. For that is a matter of personal responsibility and

individual action; government can make it easier or harder, can educate

the citizens or neglect the issues, but in the end it is impossible to enforce

healthy behaviours.

Even so, people’s health is improving. There is still too much suffering from

curable and preventable conditions and, in many countries, the way that

mental and psychological disorders are handled primarily by silence and

taboo is as big a health scandal as any. But medical science is advancing,

the sequencing of the human genome has been worked out, the genetics

of cancers are being unlocked, and new treatments are being and will be

developed. The progress is encouraging but there is further to go because

many of these conditions have social causes – lifestyle diseases whether of

poverty or spreading prosperity. What is required now is to increase the

capacity to address those causes.

HEALTH OF THE PLANET

On top of all this, there is growing awareness about the unfolding crisis in

the natural environment. Compared to the other events that have shaped the

spirit of our time, changes in the natural environment are slow moving. By

the standards of 21st-century political culture, they do not deserve the name

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