Rich and poor suffer and die of different diseases

The Global Health Observatory, presented its report "Global Health Statistics", which shows how infant death from contagious diseases has practically disappeared in rich countries (thanks to vaccination), countries where it is also aging more and more. "99% of the minors who die in the world live in the poorest countries," says the report. However, in rich nations, more and more people die during early adulthood due to stressful life, junk food, and addictions.

Differences between rich and poor countries

Cancer appears as a cause of death typical of rich nations, and not in the poor, where people cannot live long enough to develop these pathologies. Something similar happens with dementias and diseases such as Alzheimer's. In countries with lower incomes, infections, diarrheal diseases and HIV-AIDS are the leading causes of death. In "developing" nations, with incomes in the middle, heart disease leads the table. The same happens in rich nations. Media and the poor also share the second cause of death: apoplectic attacks and cerebrovascular diseases. In the third cause, the middle income have chronic lung diseases, while the cancer rich (trachea, bronchi and lung).

The disease of the rich

On June 15, 2013, a 16-year-old American teenager named Ethan Couch ran over and killed four people, leaving 9 people with serious injuries. Ethan was speeding, drunk and drugged with Valium. The prosecution requested 20 years in prison, but was sentenced to 10 years of probation and one year of psychological treatment in a private hospital. The decrease in grief is due to the fact that Ethan "grew up in a high class family". The psychologist who testified in favor of the young man argued that he suffers from a condition that would cause "not being able to calculate or understand the consequences of his actions". This disease would be called "affluence" (a mixture between influenza and opulence in English) and is a consequence of growing with the privileges of an economically rich family. There are those who have emphasized the hopeful side of this condemnation. It has been left as precedent that a teenager deserves a second chance in life. But the same judge who sentenced Ethan a few months earlier had tried a 14-year-old teenager, of different economic conditions, and African-American, for hitting a man who fell to the ground, hit his head and died. The sentence in that case was 10 years of effective prison. The judge did not consider the "unintentionality", nor the problems of context, nor mental wellness issues in the same way. This is what bothers me the most. That the "second opportunities" are reserved for those who can generate enough expectation of good future behavior. And those are more easily those who come from privileged groups.