Page 35 - Health, Population and Environment Education 9

unseen matters, ghosts or witches. Hence, they take help from the witch doctors or dhami
jhakris rather than going to the medical people or medical centers. While taking help from
the witch doctors, even the curable disease can become incurable and ultimately people
die.

ii. Spreading of diseases
People die due to suffering from various diseases.
People very often suffer from various types of
communicable diseases like diarrhoea, dysentery,
cholera, jaundice, typhoid, malaria, tuberculosis, HIV/
AIDS, hepatitis B, hepatitis C, encephalitis, swine flu,
ebola, bird flu, etc. Similarly, people suffer from non–
communicable diseases like cancer, diabetes, heart Fig: 14
disease, asthma, kidney problems, etc. Nowadays,
there is development of medical science, invention of medicines, vaccines and control over
many communicable diseases. So, some people die when they suffer from communicable
diseases. But scientists are not able to develop effective treatment methods and medicines
to control non–communicable diseases. Hence, many people die suffering from non–
communicable diseases.

iii. Lack of health services
Health services are not equally distributed in all
the parts of nation. Generally, there is lack of health
services in the rural areas in our context. In many
places, people have to walk a long distance even to
reach the nearest health center. There is acute shortage
of health manpower and medicines. In many cases,
people die on the way towards health centres. Even
if people reach the health centres, there is no presence Fig: 15
of health manpower as well as lack of medicines and
non functioning of medical equipments. Hence, people die due to lack of health services
as well as lack of health treatments and medicines.

b. Economic factors

There are various economic factors affecting death. Some are explained below:

i. Poverty
In Nepal, more than 25% of people are under poverty
line. They have difficulty to manage minimum basic
requirements. They have less or no employment
opportunities. They do not have any other source of
income. The poor people cannot afford better nutrition,
health care services, sanitation, drinking water, shelter
and other requirements. Due to inadequate supply of
basic needs, poor people have low living standard and Fig: 16
GREEN Environment Population and Health Education Book-9 35