Like many streets in Houston’s Greater Fifth Ward, Worms Street offers the perfect environment for the spread of tropical diseases. Many of these infections aren’t new, but rising temperatures and poverty create a perfect storm for their spread.
Living without running water, sanitation services or paved roads, people living in Texas colonias face grim health risks, Hunt Grant recipient Emily Ramshaw reports for the Texas Tribune/New York Times.
Although some international health indicators have improved substantially in the last decade, poverty, conflict, lack of access to health care and/or education, poor sterilization techniques, evolving human migration patterns, unsafe water, new infectious agents and changing development activities all contribute to what seems a dismal global health climate.