Poverty as a factor in STI's

Poverty is an issue that has a huge affect on the prevalence of STI's in certain areas of the world. It is hard to comprehend living in the U.S. (one of the richest countries in the world) but there are certain areas of the world where people have trouble just getting food to eat and don't even think about certain aspects of health including the spread of STI's. When looking at Sub-saharan Africa and various places in South America we can begin to understand some of the poverty that exists in this globe. Without actually being to these places or seeing their lifestyle first hand it is still hard to fully understand the situation that these people are living in. We saw in the video about Namibia how different people are living there and it seems as though it would be really hard to live there. There are so many people that are malnourished because they don't even have money to buy food. Access to healthcare in regions like this is very limited. The government doesn't have the same kind of programs like we are used to in the U.S. that help people get proper healthcare and understand the dangers that go with different STI's. Poor areas often lack proper education as well. If the people in these areas don't learn about health growing up then they are not going to fully understand what is happening when they contract an STI. They also don't learn how to properly protect themselves from getting STI's. Also as it was put in the video these people don't have money for entertainment and sex is one thing that they might enjoy that doesn't cost anything.

All of this is more us from the U.S. looking at these poverty stricken places from an outside view. There is no way to tell what these people are really going for unless we were to be in their "shoes" or at least to interact with them and learn about their culture. Rich nations are often very ignorant about the problems of people that live in poverty in other parts of the country. There is alot that we don't understand about them which leads us to believe things like it is their own fault for spreading the disease to such a level. This is not really true, much of it is just people growing up and becoming a "product of their environment". What I mean is that these people that don't get an education or health care or food every day have more things going on in their lives than we realize looking in on them. There is some poverty in the U.S. but not even on the same level as areas where the entire poplulation is pretty much poor. We do have our issues here too, and we do see increased rates of STI's in the small areas of our own country that are affected by poverty. This is definitely an issue that tends to affect STI prevalence no matter where it is.