Measures of Healthy Urbinisation Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1750 words

Measures of Healthy Urbinisation - Essay Example United nation has also studied the migration trend of people and has made a forecast about the world population by the year 2030. According to the forecast report the world population is expected to increase by 2 billion by the year 2030 and out of total increase of 2 billion people 1.9 billion people are expected to live in cities (United Nations: World Urbanization Prospectus, 2000). The shift in population from rural to cities and towns will also be responsible for certain health affects and it will be interesting to know the impact of urbanization on health issues. Actually there are various factors that might influence the health outcomes and an old study have indicated the social and economical factors are responsible for poor health outcomes (Faris & Dunham, 1939). In the present study a few positive and negative health outcomes from urbanization have been summarized. The finding of different researchers varies for a specific health outcome and if the impact is positive for a city it is not necessarily be the same for another city. A few key factors have also been identified and debated that in my opinion are essential requirement for healthy urbanization. Health in cities during 19th and 20th century: Some researchers assumed that some of the factors such as population density, pollution, and crime in cities deteriorated health during the early 19th century (Power et al, 2001) and at the same time a lack in mental fitness level especially in rural non-metropolitan areas in Australia is debated (Fraser et al, 2002). Many Asian scholars and researchers considered that the urban population is linked to the poor health especially in early 19th century (Lee, 2001). All these medical and health professionals, researchers and scholars started investigating the urban living conditions and the relationship between the health and the surrounding conditions. With the improvement of living conditions in some of the developing cities especially the sanitary conditions, the researchers found a tremendous improvement in health conditions in many European and North American cities (Hamblin, 1998). The other major conditions responsible for improving health conditions include the improvement in drinking water and immunization of population for infections. Health conditions in cities started improving by the end of nineteenth century or early 20th century and people in cities today have better health conditions than the non-urban areas. Some of the cities in specific regions of the world growing at faster pace and therefore it is really a challenge for the government officials to provide better sanitation, drinking water and housing to the new migrants so that health in general do not deteriorate here. Main Challenges for civic authorities: In my opinion the main challenge for civic authorities is to control the infectious diseases that generally starts within the cities and spread out quickly from one city to another. In the recent past we have seen many infectious diseases spreading at different intervals in different part of the world. Such infectious diseases including bird flue, SARS, HIV and malaria are more common and have posed threats to the large number of people in our society. Although bird flue and SARS were controlled quickly, however the dangers in near future cannot be ruled out. HIV is a killer health problem. A complete