THE SLUM CRISIS (homepage)
In 2012, author Katherine Boo wrote about the dismal, unhygienic life in Annawadi, a Mumbai slum, in her nonfiction book Behind the Beautiful Forevers: Life, Death, and Hope in a Mumbai Undercity. This book highlighted an environmental slum crisis: Across the world, primarily Asia and Africa, millions crowd into these filthy, packed, inhospitable, expansive settlements. They make their unfortunate citizens susceptible to sickness and death from their combined absent healthcare, untreated sewage exposure, and air pollution (book's central crisis).
Boo's Pulitzer Prize-winning book about Annawadi's environmental turmoil inspired the organization Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to create the CDC Slum Initiative (organization), whose members strive to prevent such sickness and disease from the polluted air and exposed sewage in slums (organization's task).
Disclaimer: We have produced this website for a school project, and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has not endorsed the information we provide here.