For the duration of this course, I intend on looking at Haiti. I am interested in studying this country as it pertains to health because of a course I took last semester on non-profit work by Haitians when it comes to HIV/AIDS work. Due to this course, I am now interested in how HIV/AIDs is being looked at in the nation.

Haiti is a country in the Caribbean that shares its island with the Dominican Republic. As of 2019, the population of Haiti is about 11 million people (World Population Review). Haiti is a young country, more than half of its population is under the age of 25 (World Population Review) and a life expectancy of about 63 years (UNICEF). A little over half of their population lives in urban areas, such as the capital and largest city Port au-Prince (UNICEF).

Economically speaking, the country has experienced a negative 1% growth rate in GDP between 1990-2012, about 62% of their population is below the international poverty line and they have a large wealth discrepancy as the poorest 40% of the nation holds only 8% of the wealth while the top 20% holds about 63% of the wealth (UNICEF). Haiti is a country stricken by poverty and wealth inequality. Some of the most staggering instances of this can be seen through the disparities by household wealth indexes. The richest 20% of Haitians deliver children with skilled attendants about 92% of the time, whereas the poorest 20% deliver with those skilled less than 10% of the time (UNICEF). Wealth inequality is something that I have been aware of in this nation, but not to this extent. Additionally, there is a huge gap in education as 92% of the richest 20%  children are able to go to primary school vs the poorest 20% of Haitian children are only able to send about 65.5% of their children to primary school (UNICEF). This might explain why the adult literacy rate is only about 49% (UNICEF). When it comes to women’s health and reproductive health, the prevalence of contraceptives between 2008-2012 was about 35%, maternal mortality ration comes to about 630 reported deaths for every 100,000 births, while women have a higher life expectancy as in many other countries (UNICEF). Something that I found to be of interest in the UNICEF information on Haiti was the rates of HIV/AIDS. It is estimated the 150,000 people in Haiti are living with HIV, 78,000 being women, and 12,000 being children (UNICEF). For a country of only 11 million people, this seems like a significant chunk of the population that could lead to spreading of the disease without proper education and contraception (which was already noted to only be at about 35%).