Over half of the world's population is living in 3% of the earth's land mass. This trend towards urbanization is divided unequally with 17 out of the 20 largest cities in the world being located in developing countries. Many of these countries face phenomenal growth of small and medium-sized municipalities.

Under present conditions and levels of technology, the continued expansion of large urban centres creates risks of physical, economic and social breakdowns with the most serious political consequences. In both developing and developed countries, urban growth has been accompanied by severe social and economic problems, some of which appear likely to worsen as overall population growth is accompanied by the trend toward greater urban growth.

In developed countries, problems of environmental deterioration (especially air and water pollution), traffic congestion, and other disamenities are encountered. In the developing countries, it is difficult to provide the minimum social services such as housing, water supply, sanitation, education, and medical facilities in the rapidly growing urban areas, or to absorb an ever expanding labour force into struggling urban economies. This results in a deterioration of environmental quality. In some countries, the growth of the cities is reducing land available for food production. In an average city there is no clearly recognisable structure or satisfactory layout. Most cities are built haphazardly resulting in a random character that confuses the identity of city communities, creates chaos in the pattern of land use, wastes resources and prohibits coherent patterns of any kind. Cities are not capable of providing neither intense activity in high density areas, nor intense quiet in low density areas.

The problems of the large cities of the developing countries are due largely to the fact that they have materialized ahead of any systematic movement towards modernization. Many of these cities formed transmission points from which raw materials and food were sent to the metropolises of Europe and North America, and to which manufactured goods returned. Lacking is the human and technical resources necessary to deal with the full range of urban development needs, also hampered by the dense "forest" of vertical and horizontal separations within often unmanageable national bureaucracies. Rapid population growth has increased the tendency of cities in developing countries to outgrow the resources of the economies they are supposed to nourish and support. The traditional range of public services, utilities and welfare services taken for granted in the cities of developed countries are not generally available to the inhabitants of most of the cities of developing countries; even less so in the rural areas. Lack of finance, infrastructure and skills at all levels contribute to this situation.

One of the overriding influences is at the policy-making level, where the application of priorities, based on the experiences of developed countries, has led to a misunderstanding of the urbanization process. Indeed, neither the historically conventional European city, nor the colonial city, which has been the main focus of large-scale urbanization in the rest of the world, is really well-adapted to developing countries at the present time. Nor can the largest industrial cities, for all their success in other spheres, be accepted as socially or culturally desirable models, most having conspicuously failed to adapt to modern conditions and frequently having become sprawling industrial centres of dreary anonymity. The city throughout the developing world is in one sense the sign and symbol of a development process that could break down completely in the near future. Life in the city is failing to make good deficiencies in literacy and job skills or to provide work which the illiterate and unskilled can do.

Sepsis is the body’s often deadly response to infection or injury. Sepsis kills and disables millions and requires early suspicion and treatment for survival.  Sepsis and septic shock can result from an infection anywhere in the body, such as pneumonia, influenza, and urinary tract infections. Worldwide, one-third of people who develop sepsis die. Many who do survive are left with life-changing effects, such as post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), chronic pain and fatigue, organ dysfunction (organs don’t work properly) and/or amputations. Sepsis as a top cause of death in hospitals and one of the primary causes of serious harm due to misdiagnosis. A significant hurdle when studying sepsis is the fact that many doctors overlook it as a contributing cause of death and don't list it on the death certificate.

Mental illnesses are characterized by disorders of the psyche, or mind. The view of objective reality is impaired, as are also the patient's self-correctness, his attitudes towards others and his behaviour. Some mental diseases are the result of primary affection of the brain, followed by a disturbance of the body as a whole. Others are caused by diseases of particular organs, with secondary disturbance of mental functions. They may be manifested in a variety of disorders: false sensory impressions, disturbances in thinking or mood, disturbances of consciousness and memory, and intellectual decline. Three types of mental illness are delineated; the psychoses (including schizophrenia and manic-depressive psychosis) constituting the most important group. The second group are nervous and mental disorders, including neuroses, psychopathies, and other nonpsychotic diseases. The third category is mental retardation.

The course of mental disease varies from single or rare attacks with complete remission, to severe, chronic psychoses with gross disorganization of mental activity and deterioration into feeblemindedness.

Significant mental disorder is clinically defined as a significant behavioural or psychological dysfunction that is associated with (a) present distress (a painful symptom) or (b) disability or impairment of functioning or (c) with a significantly increased risk of suffering death, pain, disability or an important loss of freedom. Another definition of mental illness is a non-organic, social-psychological disorder in which the individual is unable to protect his ego or social self sufficiently to participate in ordinary social life and obtain at least a minimal degree of social and psychological rewards.

Theft is the unjust taking of what belongs to another. There is a pervasive trend in modern criminal codes to consolidate most property acquisition offences, including stealing, larceny, embezzlement, cheating in buying and selling (such as obtaining property under false pretenses and falsifying of weights and measures), and receipt of stolen property under theft as a single offence, previously unknown as such under common law; robbery is often treated as an exception.

Corrupt practices include tax evasion, nepotism, looting the national treasury, political bribery, unequal distribution of government contracts, unjust financing of political parties, unjust election administration, use of espionage (especially for domestic purposes), secret police and intimidation. This may lead to political blackmail and corruption in other spheres, to the encouragement of organized crime and violence, lack of credibility in institutions, alienation, apathy, subversive activities, revolution, disintegration, foreign intervention or stagnation. Although corruption is not the preserve of the public services nor solely a feature in developing countries, it is a major problem of public development administration and is a reflection of what happens in society generally. Its prevalence is linked with the power for development decisions being placed in the hands of public servants; and is important because of its impact on the way these decisions are used. The low level of remuneration of a majority of public sector employees, which very often rises at a rate well behind that of inflation and does not adequately compensate for changes in the cost of living, also encourages corruption.

Politicians are known to have taken bribes, payoffs, letting companies or other outside interests to pay speaking fees, trips, accommodation, "gifts" and "income" from joint business ventures, or simply act in ways which would be usually excused in people other than those officials of high fiduciary rank and trust. The public dilemma is often not whether the misconduct was committed but rather whether is was sufficiently serious, inappropriate or unreasonable to make an issue out of it which could rule someone forever out of public office.