UN shocked by level of poverty in Alabama:
'We haven't seen this in the first world'
Philip Alston, whose job takes him around the planet to look at conditions of extreme poverty, said some of the things he saw in parts of Alabama so-called Black Belt, particularly in regard to sewage disposal, were unprecedented in the West.
“I think it's very uncommon in the first world. This is not a sight that one normally sees,” said Philip Alston, the UN’s Special Rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights. “I’d have to say that I haven’t seen this."
People in the region frequently suffer from E. Coli and hookworm, a disease associated with extreme poverty and which was thought to have been eradicated in the US more than 100 years ago.
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/wo...-a8105886.html