Non-Fiction Blog Post

I read the article "The End of Extreme Poverty" from the Upfront magazine. It is about fighting poverty in some of the poorest places in the world. For example, a lot of countries got good education and classrooms, or vaccines were given in places that didn't have them. There are too many people suffering in the world to live like that, and it could be changing.

When the author talks with a woman that has already lost a child from malaria, and has to take care of 7 other children, you can see how much affect poverty has on them. I think the U.S. should help people like that. If they help one country, they could become friends. The whole country is poor. Also, the real definition of extreme poverty means living on less than $1.25 a day. That means millions, or even billions on people live like that. There is progress, though. Extreme poverty has been reduced from 1 in 2 in 1980 to 1 in 5 now. That statistic is amazing, considering how much people live in poverty.

In the article, there are various stats that prove the reduction in poverty. In 1988 there were 350,000 cases of polio worldwide, and there are 123. People that took AIDS drugs in developing countries was less than 200,000 in 2000. In 2012 the number was 9.7 million. The global literacy rate was 76% in 1990, and it has jumped to 84% now. Also, the percentage of population with no schooling in developing nations was at 61% in 1950. It has dropped to 17% in 2010. There are way more mind-boggling statistics that show how much this world has improved.Those stats prove that this long fight against extreme poverty might bring it to an all-time low. Even though there will still be poverty, extreme poverty might die out soon enough. That means no more children uneducated or the fear of dying of sickness.

One of the biggest problems in extreme poverty is that there is sometimes no prevention of sickness for a lot of people. In 1990, more than 12 million children died before reaching the age of 5. That number has been cut in half now. Bill Gates is helping this issue, by providing vaccines and medecines, and he says that number will get to 1 million in his lifetime. I hope that will get to that number. Only as of now adults are getting vaccines or treatment for sickess they've had. Thanks to these vaccines, some diseases like polio and measles are dying out. A disease called the Guinea worm is also dying out, which is a disease makes a worm move through your body and causes intense pain or lifelong disabilities. Some popular diseases like AIDS are also moving along. AIDS are no longer killing large amounts of people, because of the vaccines available now. There will be no more epidemics or world-wide sicknesses.

In conclusion, the increasing number of vaccines and medecines to poor counries have reduced extreme poverty and risk of death by disease. Countries with no eduacation now have it, and people can live better now that they have these things in their lives.