Caitlin Foley

Professor Wooten

English 1100

14 December 2009

Child Health in Pakistan

The subject of this paper is the child health in the country of Pakistan. We got to choose any topic from the book of Three Cups of Tea that we wanted and write and informative paper on it. Being interested in the field of medicine I chose to do what kinds of treatment the kids had in a developing country like Pakistan. I wanted to let people know what it is like today in a country like that. It is shocking what they have to go through and no one does anything about it. It is not all the fact that Americans do not care, it is the fact that no one knows about what is going on. There are so many different health issues that are not an issue here in the U.S. They have problems that range from water contamination to bathing and from their food to waste. Things that we do not have to worry about anymore are everyday worries for these people. The intended audience would be high school teachers and professors. We were supposed to take the topic we chose, and infrom these teachers so they would be able to teach their kids on it. I did a good job on this aspect because I was able to name a lot of specific diseases and statistics. The author's main claim is "The children of Pakistan are suffering greatly through factors such as their food and drinking water". You can tell that she is concerned about the nature of the kids conditions. According to the author, "The children of the nation of Pakistan make up amost half of the population and if they are dying from these causes, what will happen in the future?" This is scary for this nation because they may mean that they are going to be wiped out. The main claim that the author makes in this paper is that we need to help Pakistan. The country obviously has no future because "every one out of ten children die befoe reaching the age of five and one out of thirty die just after they are born". Those statistics are not in their favor. It would not take much for us to help them. "To help cure these diseases, it just takes a vaccination either once in their life or once every couple of years". Some of the children are not getting the nutritional value that they need to be eating so they are not developing correctly. The author claims that "even if we just inform these people of these risks and how to help them sure some infections can do a lot". The claims specifically stated are that Pakistan is clearly not up to our level of medicine. They need to be sent more medicine to help their people. The poverty level is extremely low over there and that results in the kids not getting an education and the parents not being able to buy food for their families. People think that women should be allowed to work to help out with the poverty but since everyone is old-fashioned over in Pakistan, they make the women stay at home and work with the children. The education overall is not good and that leads to not being able to get a job. The technology is not safe for people to be living in. They do not even have phones to call each other on to get a certain type of medicine. "Only one out of four child births is attented by a skilled assistant". That fact alone could be the reason many mothers do not make it through their child birth. They do not know what to do and they do not have the right type of medication to help them through it. The huge factor is that, "of the 35 million people in the country, 24 percent is malnourished". That is a hufe percentage of people that are not eating the appropriate food. The author ends with the fact that people of other nations are going to need to help this poor, developing country, because they are not going to be able to do it on their own. The creator of this paper used a few things to help influence and persuade her audience. First of all, she used statistical data that was shocking to see. For example, "The leading cause of death in Pakistan is diarrhoea, with about 250,000 people dying from it". People in America do not even consider the idea of dying from diarrhoea because it is just a side-effect to us. For the people of Pakistan, though, they have to worry about it on a day-to-day basis. The authoer also states, "Even now, 35 million out of the total 47 million are considered poor". That amount is so overwhelming and that should be a sign to us that they need help. Another way the author persuades her audience is she goes into a lot of detail about the issue at hand. For example, "One in four families struggle to survive on one dollar a day or less. A family needs a lot of things to survive such as: water, food, money for medication, and shelter. There is not much that a mother or father can do once their child is sick and they have no job, money or education. They pray to their gods and that is all they can do". With this picture in their head as they are reading, people may get the sudden urge to help out and put in their part. The writer is very determined to help out these kids that are suffering. You can tell because she states, "A child should not have to suffer just because of where he/she lives". This statement is competely true. They cannot help it if they are born in America, Pakistan, England, or wherever. I know that if we were the ones put in Pakistan we would want help too. She states that, "Helping out this poor country will not be hard.... We have fundraisers to help so many different things, why not make one to help other countries?" Something as basic as a fundraiser would help a country like that monumentally. It would help provide people with no shelter a place to stay, people with no food something to eat, and people with no education the ability to send their kids to school. It would switch up the whole pattern of things. The text is organized in a certain order. The author opens with the basic idea for her paper. She tells about the malnutrition of the children and the diseases. She gives a little statistical information to keep the reader interested. The next paragraph talks about the diseases that the kids are dying from. The following paragraph talks of the poverty level and how many families have little or no money to survive on. This poverty also plays into disease because they are not able to afford medication. It also means that they cannot afford to pay for their child's education so their kids will most likely grow up poor and in the same situation the parents are in. It goes on to talk about the lack of techonology they have. It mentioned in Three Cups of Tea that with just building a bridge, it helped out the community so much. It took people hours rather than days to get to the next community of people. The next section talks about the kids being malnourished. It may be from the nutritional value not being reached or simply from the fruits and vegetables not being washed. "The most dammaging disorder coming from the lack ofiodine is mental retardation". That fact can explain the big circle of this poor community. The parents grow up poor because their parents cannot afford to send them to school. So when they grow up, they are poor and cannot find jobs. Once they have kids, they cannot afford to have food and they lack iodine in their system so their chances of becoming mentally retarded are high. This cycle could go on until they receive help. The last factor the author makes is that this country needs help. It makes sense to put this at the end because after hearing all the things that are going wrong, someone is going to want to help out. The style of the paper is formal because it is being written for high school teachers.