What we used to think was a problem over 6,000 miles away in Sub-Saharan Africa is now hitting us right at home. A large challenge we, as a western country, face is ignorance to the possibility that our environmental circumstances may resemble those in poorer countries. We like to think of ourselves as a westernized and industrialized leading super power that will solve the problems of the developing world that we encountered long in the past or never had to see.
The reality is that in our very own backyard, we are finding tropical parasites usually found in Sub-Saharan Africa and Asia. As a result of poor families homes in Lowndes County Alabama unable to afford proper septic systems and state governments’ inadequate support, raw sewage leaked in to yards creating pools of sewage beginning in 2001. These pools of contamination attract mosquitos and tapeworms that can carry different diseases (Gist.org). With rising temperatures due to climate change and increased rainfall, these pools have the ability to grow and pose increased threat to neighborhoods. This creates a perfect habitat for parasites, otherwise known as hookworms, to inhabit and breed. The hookworm infection plaguing Lownes County is just like many other cases, where the extreme poverty and poor sanitation allow for the growth of endemic infections.
Further devastating is the fact that suffering individuals are afraid of reporting such issues due to fear of arrest or criminal prosecution for open-piping sewage from their homes (The Guardian). Since they are unable to afford a septic tank, they have no other choice but to suffer and see the environmental threat grow in front of them. The lack of support and infrastructure provided by the government is an environmental injustice that is slowly gaining attention.
Catherine Flowers is making significant strides to solve this environmental injustice by helping build affordable septic systems (Gist.org). However Dr Peter Hotez, dean of the National School of Tropical Medicine in Houston, Texas suggests something of extreme importance that our country need accept to proceed further. He “warns against complacency and estimates as many as 12 million Americans living with a poverty-related neglected tropical disease.” He notes that most of the world’s neglected diseases are actually in the G20 countries and that “the concept of global health needs to give way to a new paradigm: on the new map, Texas and the Gulf coast would be lit up as a hotspot” (Financial Times). His shift in reconsidering global health as an issue that hits us right at home is imperative for solving the environmental threats and injustices hitting our nation.
Photograph: Bob Miller from The Guardian
