Poverty is the greatest enemy of good health. Health and poverty are greatly related. Why does being poor affects one’s overall health? Being poor forces people to make choices costly to health. It affects:

• Food choices
• Shelter
• Clothing
• Access to water
• Sanitation

So how is health related to the economy? Note that money is a resource that can allow us to buy things that can make us healthy. A healthy life expectancy and GDP/person are very well connected. As GDP grows, health is also slowly growing. So if you are unhealthy and poor, the trend is you’re not going to live long. When the economy is rich, the society can afford to create a healthy community for everyone and thus allows people to live longer and enjoy life to the fullest.

We have what is termed to as Fragile States. These are economies who are over indebted. In other words, they owe a huge amount of money to other countries. Fragile states account to a huge percentage of global health statistics. Maternal death, poverty and under five deaths are common in fragile states. This is a clear symbol of something being wrong in the economy and the health system of a country. This would result to investors not wanting to invest in these countries because they feel that they won’t profit.