Slums: Causing Worldwide Change One by One
Slums. Some people live in them, others do not even know of their existence, but they are something that affects the world as a whole. They are found worldwide and many people call these places home. Slums are places overcrowded with people who live in poverty and very poor conditions. These conditions affect populations around the world because slums are more prone to disease, do not usually have the right education for children, and increase populations in cities significantly. Often times, they are located in or near major cities. One of the things that people in slums face often is exposure to multiple diseases.
Since there is very few, if any, sanitation in slums, the people are more vulnerable to many diseases that are potentially fatal. In this quote it shows that in this particular slum the sewage passes like a dirty river across the whole place. Many times this is the actual cause of the people being more vulnerable to diseases. “A few steps into Kiberia, we encounter brown-green water flowing through an open ditch. ‘That’s the sewage’… The polluted stream sometimes overflows and floods them. While sewage from outside Kiberia flows into the slum, the sewage from inside never leaves.”(Fink p.1). Another source States that, “according to the United Nations, slum children in sub-Saharan Africa are more likely to die from water-borne and respiratory illnesses than rural children, while women living in slums are more likely to contract HIV than their country cousins.” (Eaves p.2). These quotes demonstrate that poverty leads to poor sanitation, which leads to vulnerability to more diseases. Poverty in these slums also leads to poor education in current and future generations.
Furthermore, the lack of proper education is the cause for future problems. Education and money are major things in the world; without one or the other, many people cannot really get too far in life. As written by Elisabeth Eaves in an article she wrote called Two Billion Slum Dwellers, “In countries including Egypt, Bangladesh and Guatemala, slum children are less likely to be enrolled in primary school than their urban counterparts.”(Eaves p.2). If these children of the slums do not get educated, then they have fewer job possibilities available to them. Most of them will be limited to working in others' homes doing the cleaning like many of their parents do. Children will be forced to take their parents’ places in the jobs they did or the shops they were in charge of because they did not get educated and were not able to learn how to do anything else with their lives. While many see it as a good thing for paraphernalia and family shops to get passed down from generation to generation, it leaves those children without much choice in life. The only option for kids will be to follow their parent’s steps and follow their trade, or find someone who can help them learn something new. Even though proper education is not provided, populations in slums are growing at an astounding rate.
In addition, the rate at which these places are growing near large cities is astonishing. When the population of a place finds itself growing, but the place itself is not able to keep up, problems arise as a consequence. Places that were once abandoned or tranquil find themselves overcrowded and without enough resources to properly sustain the people living there. In view of the fact that a “United Nations report concludes that the number of people living in urban areas will rise from 3.3 billion in 2007 to 6.4 billion in 2050.”(Blythe p.3), the reader can reason that the populations in just urban areas will almost double in less than half a century. Since over the years the populations and the forming of slums worldwide have not yet shown signs of slowing down soon, it is predicted that populations around the world will find themselves growing at faster rates than ever before. Slums, as a whole, cause many effects to populations around the world because of the rate at which they are growing. These increases of people as well as other factors bring about major changes to many countries.
In conclusion, it is true that many people are unaware of what slums are, but in time, the existence of slums will become very present to the whole world. Slums and the conditions its populace live in affect populations around the world because they are more prone to disease, cannot provide proper education for the children living there, and increase populations in cities significantly. With sewage flowing in the front step of houses, no one can really say that the people living in slums are able to have proper hygiene. Additionally, education in slums is not something that happens very often, which means fewer job opportunities are available for slum inhabitants. Also, these slums are growing faster and faster around cities causing significant increases in populations of urban areas worldwide. With slum populations’ affecting everyone sooner or later, it is only logical to start to wonder what it is that is happening, or will become of, communities in the countryside of nations around the world.
