In light of its devastating toll on families and communities, a significant step toward alleviating poverty and hunger in sub-Saharan Africa and many other developing nations would be to alleviate the spread of the disease .

The disease of poverty and lifestyle,Well-Being and Human Development

Explanation:

Diseases of Poverty, Lifestyle Diseases, Optimism Deprivation, Capability Deprivation, Well-Being, Longevity, Professional Burnout, Psychosomatic Ailments, Human Development, Faulty Lifestyle, Lifestyle Stress, Health Promoting Behaviours, Negative Emotions, Positive Health, The Simplicity Movement

The problems of the haves differ substantially from those of the have-nots. Individuals in developing societies have to fight mainly against infectious and communicable diseases, while in the developed world the battles are mainly against lifestyle diseases. Yet, at a very fundamental level, the problems are the same-the fight is against distress, disability, ; against human exploitation and for human development and self-actualisation; against the callousness to critical concerns in regimes and scientific power centres.

While there has been great progress in the treatment of individual diseases, human pathology continues to increase. Sicknesses are not decreasing in number, they are only changing in type.

The primary diseases of poverty like TB, malaria, and HIV/AIDS-and the often co-morbid and ubiquitous malnutrition-take their toll on helpless populations in developing countries. Poverty is not just income deprivation but capability deprivation and optimism deprivation as well.

While life expectancy may have increased in the haves, and infant and maternal mortality reduced, these gains have not necessarily ensured that well-being results. There are ever-multiplying numbers of individuals whose well-being is compromised due to lifestyle diseases. These diseases are the result of faulty lifestyles and the consequent crippling stress. But it serves no one's purpose to understand them as such. So, the prescription pad continues to prevail over lifestyle-change counselling or research.

The struggle to achieve well-being and positive health, to ensure longevity, to combat lifestyle stress and professional burnout, and to reduce psychosomatic ailments continues unabated, with hardly an end in sight.

We thus realise that morbidity, disability, and mortality assail all three societies: the ones with infectious diseases, the ones with diseases of poverty, and the ones with lifestyle diseases. If it is bacteria in their various forms that are the culprit in infectious diseases, it is poverty/deprivation in its various manifestations that is the culprit in poverty-related diseases, and it is lifestyle stress in its various avatars that is the culprit in lifestyle diseases. It is as though poverty and lifestyle stress have become the modern “bacteria” of developing and developed societies, respectively.