Poverty is highly affected by health care because with illnesses thrive in people that cannot afford a well balanced diet. In Guyana 1.7% of the GDP is spent on healthcare, leading to improvements such as the infant mortality rates dropping from 41 deaths per 1000 in 1960 to 29 in 2002. Also, it’s increased the training for doctors, meaning that by the end of 2004 there were 190 fully trained doctors in Guyana and a plan to train 500 nurses in place (Guyana’s poverty reduction paper, 2005). This decreases poverty by allowing everyone to have a good healthcare, making opportunities such as careers possible as they’re fit to work. However, 1.7% of Guyana’s total expenditure isn’t a huge amount to deal with the large suffering from problems such as the spread of diseases like HIV, which affects 12 000 people, and malaria which can be found in 30 000 people. Despite this, the government has been able to increase the amount of malaria nets available and treatment for pregnant women with HIV has increased from 86% to 90% (Guyana’s poverty reduction paper, 2005).
Low wage employment in Guyana is very common, with 71.5% of the population living in rural areas and working as self-employed agricultural labourers. By improving education, it gives the population the skills and knowledge needed to access well paid jobs and therefore earn an income. Today, Guyana’s education system is one of the worst, with a ratio of students to trained teachers ranging from 41:1 to 186:1. To develop the education system, the Guyanese Government spends 4.4% of total expenditure on education with improvements such as training 201 head teachers, a new methodology to improve the teaching of reading and causing secondary enrolment rates to rise from 54% to 65%. (CIA World Factbook)
In the UK a vast 13.5 million people, 23%, are living in poverty (CIA World Factbook). This percentage is nearly half that of Guyana’s poverty population but it’s still a huge problem that the government are trying to tackle.
When comparing the education systems, looking at Guyana’s expenditure of 4.4% against the UK’s 5.3% represents that Guyana isn’t spending enough on improving their education. This is because the UK already contains 30,000 schools () , whereas Guyana has 1,273 schools (Guyana’s poverty reduction paper, 2005), yet the UK’s still spending more in comparison in order to improve the facilities and teaching quality to provide the best qualifications. Also, the pupil teacher ratio for the UK is a figure of 16.5:1, due to the employment of 441,200 teachers (MacLeod,D. 2008). This allows the students of the UK to receive a thorough education with constant access to a teacher. However, unemployment in the UK is still a high 8.4%, meaning that 2.67 million people are unable to find jobs (CIA World Factbook). Despite this, in the UK the government are able to offer benefits to support the unemployed that cannot afford to look after themselves, whereas Guyana is unable to offer this service.
Furthermore, In the UK the infant mortality rate is 4.62 deaths per 1000, which is much lower than Guyana’s mortality rate, due to a better healthcare system with use of technology and trained doctors. Saying this, the Guyanese government has recently invested in the use of refrigerators for better storage of medication and has started to use information technology for more organised administration. The UK spends around 9.4% of it’s GDP on healthcare and this is vastly more than the 1.7% of Guyana and is represented by the comparison of infant mortality rates. However, 9.4% is still 0.5% below the ‘Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development’ average and about 1% below the average of the European Union, therefore if the UK were to increase it’s expenditure the standard of healthcare could be improved (CIA World Factbook).
In conclusion, from looking at indicators such as mortality rates, teacher pupil ratios and the amount of schools in the countries it’s clear that both the UK and Guyana still have a long way to go before abolishing poverty. However, the UK’s attempts seem to be more effective and better at supporting the poor. This is because, Guyana needs to invest more of it’s GDP into the education system in order to train a sufficient amount of teachers, to lower the pupil teacher ratio, and ensure the best future in terms of employment.
Also, I believe that 1.7% of Guyana’s GDP is never going to be enough to get rid of the diseases that are quickly spreading through the population, such as HIV and malaria. The poor are most vulnerable to catching diseases, as they can’t afford to life a balanced and healthy lifestyle. Equally, by spending more money of the health system and improving sanitation this would continue to decrease the infant mortality rate which is currently much higher than UK’s.
The UK however, need to act in order to bring down the unemployment figure as this would allow people to earn an income letting them improve their living standards.
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