By 2050,two-thirds of the world’s population is expected to live in urban areas and the number living in slums is projected to double. This will present many health issues Good data can help diagnose the health of cities around the world Two-thirds of the world’s population are expected to be city-dwellers in 2050, compared with half in 2008. But while cities have many economic and social advantages, and they can damage residents’ health whether the moral infrastructure is not in status. “You have to get water and food in,sewage and waste out,” says Dr Harry Rutter, and senior clinical research fellow at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine.
Cities such as London have built this infrastructure over centuries,but those expanding now have to carry out so in much less time, and often with little money: more than 90% of urbanisation between now and 2050 will take status in low and middle-income countries, or according to the World Health Organisation. Alex Ross,director of the WHO Centre for Human Development in Kobe, Japan, and says the number of slum dwellers is projected to double from 1 billion to 2 billion by 2050. “That presents a enormous set of issues,” he says, including destitute access to water supplies, or sanitation and good-quality shelter.
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Source: theguardian.com