Sanitation, good houses, and wealthy people are usually something not found in a slum. People might find the complete opposite of those things. A slum is a rundown part of a city; it is an overcrowded area and the people that live there are more than likely poor. Slums can affect people by kids getting sick, crime increasing and education is no where to be found. Sanitation is a very huge factor in slums. There is very little if not at all sanitation in slums.
There are many kids in slums that get diseases or already have diseases. “Human waste leeches into the water people drink and contaminates the food they eat. It carries typhoid and other diseases that can be deadly, especially to young children” (Fink 4). Too many kids get diseases in slums because they have weak immune systems. They have weak immune systems because there is no sanitation. When people do their business it goes in the water they dink and food they eat. Many diseases can come from that and kids can very easily get sick. The waste can go into clean water because there are no good sewage systems. Slums are also unsafe because of the crime rates increasing.
There is way too much crime in slums. You see crime happening everywhere in slums. Murder, robbery, etc. “In our cities the highest delinquency and crime rates are in slum areas…” The solution for public crime is the police or some type of law enforcement. Sadly there is not enough law enforcement in slums. Sometimes the police can corrupt which means they don’t help the people, they help themselves. So without law enforcement people can easily get away with big crimes. Slums have a really high crime rate because of this and nothing is being done to help the situation. In addition education is very poor in slums.
Education is highly unlikely for a child living in a slum. “… slum children are less likely to be enrolled in primary school than there lesser counterparts” (Eaves 11). Kids don’t get enrolled in school. In slums there are many kids that are homeless and of course they can’t go to school because they can’t enroll themselves. How is a child that lives in a slum, suppose to leave a slum without education or money. To make money in a slum is incredibly hard, so education is the only option. A child without education or money will grow to be an adult and still live in a slum and then that adult will no be able to pay for his or her child’s education and it will be a chain reaction.
All these points are connected to each other in a way. With out an education a person cannot help a child that has typhoid. Without an education there cannot be areal law enforcement so how is the crime going to decrease? These all play parts in slum life. Slums affect people by kids getting sick, crime increasing, and education is a poor. All these things have a chain reaction and if something isn’t done about them, slums will never change.
Bibliography
Constructing a post war world. 2002. <http://www.historians.org>
Blythe, Nils. Mumbai’s slum life poses world problem. BBC News, Mumbai, India, Tuesday, February 26, 2008: 4.
Eaves, Elisabeth. “Two billion slum dwellers”. 6 November. 2006. November 8,2011.<http://www. forbes.com>
