In the modern world today there were predictions that after the end of World War II, it would mark the end of infectious diseases. World-wide vaccination programs helped in confirming that prediction. Nevertheless, the strike of the AIDS epidemic in the eighties of the last century started the era in which it should be called its signature disease. Along with AIDS, it was followed by new infections and diseases which were even in deadlier forms than they previously existed. As AIDS is relevant to the end of the last century, and the beginning of the millennium, there were questions, on whether the new disease is connected to the cultural changes that occurred in the past 80 -100 years. How the previous diseases were connected to the human evolutional progress of that era. In this essay, the connection between diseases and health problems to the changing social problems will be covered.
The history of fatal diseases has its roots going back to the period of human gathering and hunting culture. The transformation from that culture to the agricultural civilization could be marked as the start of the progress of viral evolution and the lethal integrity in human life.
In an explanation of the evolution of the viruses, it should be mentioned that the background to this evolution lies in the system of adaptation and evasion of viruses to our immune system.
Going further it must be noted that the various affecting factors of this adaptation are caused by the social problems in particular countries as the beginning and later transformed into global world problems. These social problems were a resulting effect of the cultural characteristic of each historical period with its own set of diseases included.
The start was marked with the shift from gathering and hunting to agriculture, going further the urbanization of the land and formation of the cities caused an overpopulation and as a result disease that spread through the air in high-density cities. As examples are not chronologically ordered the start of the wave trade and commerce between countries start diseases tracked from the traders of the Asian regions. The lack of sanitation in poor countries opened a gate for diseases that spread with water, another cause is the lack of education, where an example given by K.W. Dettwayler in Mali where a total infection goes unnoticed and mixed with signs of maturity.
In an attempt to mention some of the diseases it would be necessary to bring attention to the 20th century’s main disease – AIDS. The factors that aided in spreading the aids like tourism not related to social problems, although the condition of the countries that were visited such as Haiti and Thailand with their poverty and unemployment levels made prostitution an attractive way to earn the living and the high rates of tourists and low price of services made the disease spread as fast as from 0.04% to 70% in twenty months.
The connection between social problems and diseases is various. Some of them are direct as the absence of basic health conditions to afford to cover the problematic regions, and indirect as the different social problems like poverty, unemployment, and urbanization. The task is to be at least informed, and the rest is to hope that social, cultural, scientific, and religious forces will overwhelm the disease, not us.
Works Cited
Robins R. (2004). “Global Problems and the Culture of Capitalism”. Pearson Allyn and Bacon.