Oct 30, 2008

The Impact of Globalization on the Quality of Life


Developing countries in the Caribbean such as Jamaica and Cuba are seeing the impacts of globalization in terms of their improving quality of life. Globalization has improved many aspects of their lives such as medicine and education. Unfortunately, these countries have a long way to go in order to have comparable programs like developed countries like the United States.

In 2006, Jamaican native and Professor Audrey Watkins gave a speach describing her quality of life growing up in Jamaica. She spoke of how she would have never chosen to go to Kingston Public Hospital because of its lack of modern healthcare, which at the time, she did not know existed. She described how the hospital often did not have the medication avaliable for its patients, and in many cases, the medication was not avaliable on the island at all. She also described the other major problem facing the healthcare field in Jamaica, the decreasing number of doctors and nurses. She compared the small country of Jamaica to the United States. In the United States, there are 97.2 nurses for every 10,000 people. In Jamaica, there are 11.3 nurses for every 10,000 people. In other words, there are not nearly enough nurses in Jamaica to serve the population. In addition, the number of nurses is decreasing over time because of another issue, the lack of modern education.

The medical field cannot improve without proper education, and many of the experienced teachers in Jamaica are gone because of rigorous teacher training on the island. The impact on the population is striking. Over 20% of Jamaican high school graduates are still illiterate. Without proper education, the healthcare field will never improve.

Luckily, developed countries are aware of these problems facing developing countries. They are helping to provide proper education. Without globalization, these countries would almost never be able to improve. This prime example shows the importance of globalization in developing countries.

Image: A Jamaican school. Without improved education systems, Jamaica's development will be slowed down.

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