(a) Reflect on your own knowledge and list the main diseases in the country where you live.

(b) Again using your own knowledge, would you say that AIDS is a problem in the country where you live? What is being done to counteract the threat of AIDS?

I want now to explore whether it is possible to establish other patterns of disease. Are some geographical areas within a country more disease-prone than others? Are some groups of people more disease-prone than others?

Activity Four

Which parts of the country where you live would you expect to be more disease-prone than others? Write down your answer, briefly stating your reasons.

I cannot answer this question as your answer will depend on which country you live in. I would expect, however, the most disease-prone people to live in at least one of the following:
* climatically and geographically unhealthy areas
* poorer areas
* areas with poor access to clean water, sanitation and medical facilities.

Of course, these three types of area might actually be the same places. Thus poor people will tend to live in the unhealthy areas and will tend to have poor access to clean water, sanitation and medical facilities. This suggests that poverty is the basic link with disease, a subject which we will return to later.

We can, once we think about it, establish many patterns of disease, and many have been studied. I intend now to explore three:
* patterns between men and women
* patterns around level of education
* patterns connected to poverty.

We'll start off in Section Three by looking at Disease and Gender.

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