Brute Luck, Option Luck or Politics?
Mohan Rao
PUBLIC HEALTH, ETHICS AND EQUITY by Sudhir Anand, Fabienne Peter and Amartya Sen Oxford University Press, 2007, 316 pp., 595
March 2007, volume 31, No 3

The world has never before been as rich as it is today. Yet substantial populations of the world are bereft of resources to ensure a modicum of health. Nearly 1.3 billion people, overwhelmingly in the formerly colonized countries of the South, live on less than a dollar a day and close to one billion cannot meet their basic calorie requirements. More than 800 million people lack access to health services, and 2.6 billion people to basic sanitation. Although people are living longer today than at any time in the past, around 1.5 billion people are not expected to survive to age 60. Indeed life expectancy in some countries of sub-Saharan Africa is only around 40 years.

One familiar reason given for the widespread poverty and ill-health in poor countries is of course, over-population, a red herring. Despite population growth, per capita food production increased by nearly 25 per cent between 1990 and 1997.

The per capita daily supply of calories rose from less than 2,500 to 2,750 and that of proteins, from 71 to 76 grams. In other words, not one person in the world needs to go to bed hungry.

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