ABSTRACT

Poverty, hunger, and disease have been harsh and often cruel realities from the very beginning of the human experience. Most of humankind, even today, live in the shadow of the four horsemen of the apocalypse: war, famine, pestilence, and death. And we’ve known for more than 150 years – for certain ever since the Great Irish Famine of the 1840s – that hunger and most especially famine, engender disease which in the extreme leads to death in massive numbers, cutting life short for many of its victims. This article is organized along three central contours. The first three sections present the key facts of poverty, hunger, and disease. The next section outlines the fundamental causes. And the last section explores essential remedies to these problems.