Poverty Facts
Poverty Facts
Poverty Facts
Four out of every ten people in the world dont have access even to a simple latrine. Five million people, mostly children, die each year from water-borne diseases.
Agriculture In 1960, Africa was a net exporter of food; today the continent imports one-third of its grain. More than 40 percent of Africans do not even have the ability to obtain sufficient food on a day-today basis. Declining soil fertility, land degradation, and the AIDS pandemic have led to a 23 percent decrease in food production per capita in the last 25 years even though population has increased dramatically. For the African farmer, conventional fertilizers cost two to six times more than the world market price. The devastating effect of poverty on women Above 80 percent of farmers in Africa are women. More than 40 percent of women in Africa do not have access to basic education. If a girl is educated for six years or more, as an adult her prenatal care, postnatal care and childbirth survival rates, will dramatically and consistently improve. Educated mothers immunize their children 50 percent more often than mothers who are not educated. AIDS spreads twice as quickly among uneducated girls than among girls that have even some schooling. The children of a woman with five years of primary school education have a survival rate 40 percent higher than children of women with no education. A woman living in sub-Saharan Africa has a 1 in 16 chance of dying in pregnancy or childbirth. This compares with a 1 in 3,700 risk for a woman from North America. Every minute, a woman somewhere dies in pregnancy or childbirth. This adds up to 1,400 women dying each dayan estimated 529,000 each yearfrom pregnancy-related causes. Almost half of births in developing countries take place without the help of a skilled birth attendant.
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