Global Public Health And War

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Global Public Health and War Surname Professor Date Global Public Health and War Public health is essentially what the society does to assure its people of health and safety (Institute of Public Health, 1988). War is a significant anathema to public health and directly accounts for almost millions of deaths occurring annually throughout the world. Apart from bruising and injuring the public health, it destroys the societal infrastructure as well food and water supplies, adequate housing, access to good and adequate public health services and healthcare. It is therefore evident that it accounts for more deaths when it is compared to other hazards and catastrophes. War usually creates catastrophic long-term psychological…show more content…
These include radiological, nuclear, biological as well as chemical weapons. They pose the greatest threat to large populations of people. The nuclear bombs that were detonated in Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945 for instance, were based on nuclear fission. Each of the bombs had an explosive force that is equivalent to about 15, 000 tons of TNT. The explosion killed and fatally wounded approximately 100,000 people. An additional number of people were also injured from the heat and radiation causing different illnesses. In the 1950s, the Soviet Union and the United States developed hydrogen bombs, also thermonuclear weapons that were similarly based on nuclear fission. These had an explosive capability that is similar to twenty million tons and more of TNT. An analysis of the medical consequences of these new weapons by medical organizations like the Physicians for Social Responsibility demonstrated that using them would cause millions of catastrophic global health problems similar to the worldwide radioactive fallout that caused numerous casualties from cancer deaths, as well as respiratory tract infections from the massive clouds of smoke that hang in the air. The debris also blocked and absorbed the sun’s rays and hence causing a ‘nuclear winter” that led to a consequent loss of crops and hence starvation (Barry & Victor, 1988). There are numerous nations that are known to have in their
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