Joining together to combat poverty

The International Poverty and Health Network (IPHN) was created in December 1997 following a series of conferences organized by the World Health Organ ization, with the aim of integrating health into plans to eradicate poverty . Around 1.3 billion people live on less than US$1 per day Of the 4.4 billi on people in developing countries nearly 60% lack access to sanitation, 30% do not have clean water, 20% have no health care, and 20% do not have enou gh dietary energy and protein. Even among rich nations there are gross soci oeconomic inequalities. Many children are robbed of their physical and ment al potential through poverty. Expressed in constant 1963 US dollars, an ave rage Croatian family needed the annual income of US$894 to meet the poverty line in 1960 and US$9,027 in 1995. Accordingly, 9-25% of Croatian househol ds were below the poverty line between 1960 and 1995. The increase in the p overty rate after 1991 was compounded by the war that destroyed almost a th ird of industrial capacity and infrastructure. Dissipation of the communist economy and inadequate privatization have contributed to the increase in u nemployment rate, corruption, and other social ills. IPHN invited Croatian Medical Journal to publish this editorial to help push the issue of poverty up political and medical agendas on a global level. We argue that a factor contributing to the failure of most large-scale programs against poverty t o date is the excessive emphasis on material and infrastructure assistance at the expense of spiritual, moral, and intellectual development.