Food, Water and Housing

 

Fighting disease in poor countries also means fighting poverty. People are more likely to fall ill if they are chronically hungry and malnourished, as is the case with more than one-third of the people in Haiti, Rwanda and Lesotho. 

A Haitian proverb spotlights the connections between disease and hunger, medicine and food: "Giving drugs without food is like washing your hands and drying them in the dirt." Similarly, the risk of disease and death skyrockets when people must drink dirty water or when sick and healthy family members are crammed together in a leaky, smoke-filled hut.

Lack of food, clean water, and adequate housing undermines treatment and impedes recovery after people do get sick. Even the best medical care may have little effect if patients are too malnourished to absorb their medicines, if they are swallowing their pills with contaminated water, or if they are living in shacks where the rains pour in. 

 

Food 

The devastating impact of hunger and malnutrition on health care cannot be overestimated. People whose bodies and immune systems have been weakened by hunger are far more likely to fall ill, far more likely to suffer serious or fatal complications when they do, and far less able to benefit from treatment. Medications are often less effective or difficult to take on an empty stomach; travel to clinics becomes impossible due to weakness; work time cannot be spared for medical visits. 

Hunger is particularly dangerous for people with consumptive diseases like AIDS and tuberculosis that significantly increase nutrient requirements and cause crippling loss of weight, strength, and energy. Symptomatic HIV patients require 20 to 30 percent more calories than HIV-negative people. People living with HIV need more food, but they usually get less. A PIH study in rural Haiti found that HIV-positive patients were nearly 10 times more likely to have limited the number of times they ate and 12 times more likely to have passed a day without eating in the previous month than HIV-negative or untested individuals. 

At PIH project sites, clinicians and community health workers evaluate patients’ needs and identify those who require food support to improve the effectiveness of medications and alleviate the burden of hunger. In 2006, PIH teamed up with the World Food Program to begin distributing food to an additional 2,500 patients and their families in Haiti. This partnership was significantly expanded after the 2010 earthquake when hundreds of thousands of people were without food. 

Since then, PIH has begun an agricultural program called Zanmi Agrikol, which supports thousands of farms. Part of the peanut crop grown directly supports our Nourimanba project. At the same time, PIH has continued to advocate food security at both the local and international level.

 

Clean water 

Access to clean water is a basic human right and a prerequisite for health. Yet an estimated 1.1 billion people around the world – roughly four times the U.S. population – lack access to safe water. At any given time, almost half of all people living in developing countries are suffering from a health problem caused by lack of safe water and sanitation. 

Diseases spread by unsafe water cause 3 million deaths a year, disproportionately affecting young children. Diarrhea, primarily a disease of dirty water, is the biggest killer of children under five in poor countries, resulting in nearly 4,000 preventable deaths each day – nearly 3 deaths every minute of every day. 

Water projects are one of the most effective ways of saving lives and one of the most cost-effective investments in disease prevention. Potable water projects typically reduce diarrheal disease by upwards of 50 percent, with even higher reductions during water-borne epidemics, such as cholera and typhoid. The WHO estimates that every $1 invested in water and sanitation yields between $3 and $34 in reduced medical costs and increased productivity, depending on the region. 

In 1985, PIH brought clean water to the village of Cange, Haiti by establishing a major hydraulic system. In one fell swoop this project eliminated child deaths caused by diarrhea in Cange. PIH has learned that while many of the challenges to improving health in Haiti would take decades to address, making clean water available can save and improve lives right away. During the past twenty-five years, we have worked hard to achieve this goal, constructing and repairing water and sanitation systems not just in Haiti, but Rwanda, Malawi, Lesotho and Chiapas, Mexico.

 

Housing

For hundreds of millions of the world’s poor, home is not a place of comfort but an incubator for disease and despair. The U.N. Human Settlements Program estimates that more than 1 billion rural dwellers and 600 million urban residents in developing countries live in overcrowded housing with poor water quality, lack of sanitation and no garbage collection. 

Roofs and walls of scavenged materials do not protect from rain, wind, pests, or intruders. Dirt floors turn to mud in the rainy season. Smoke and heat from open cooking fires cause respiratory ailments and severe burns. 

Housing affects health in many different ways. Deficient housing can compromise a family’s access to water, sanitation and safe food preparation and storage. Poor temperature and humidity regulation can lead to respiratory disease. Overcrowding greatly increases the risk of disease spreading rapidly across all members of a household. 

PIH’s housing programs uphold the right of the poor to safe, sturdy housing. In Haiti, PIH’s Program on Social and Economic Rights (POSER) has constructed simple, decent homes for hundreds of families. ZL’s program of housing rehabilitation, renovation and construction gives priority to the needs of patients living with HIV or TB, whose medical and economic needs are often greatest.

Based on the success of this project, PIH has since implemented housing projects in Rwanda, Malawi and Peru. In Guatemala, PIH reduces the smoke from indoor cooking fires. In Rwanda, PIH hired and trained a Pygmy community to replace grass huts with brick homes.

 

Read recent articles highlighting PIH's work in food, water and housing.