Health in Africa

Unit 2: Population and Health

11/4/16

Original article can be found here

Synopsis:

          Currently, life in Africa is not the same as it used to be. Health has especially changed in the past hundred+ years. The diseases that used to do the most damage are not doing so now. This is because Sub-Saharan Africa is actually undergoing an epidemiological transition. So as the continent development increases, the most dangerous diseases become the non-communicable diseases rather than the communicable ones. Therefore, there are now more chronic diseases than those being passed down from one person to the next. In 1980 it used to be that tuberculosis and measles were some of the leading killer diseases but now it is mostly malaria and pneumonia. Sub-Saharan Africa has also underwent an improvement in life expectancy and lowered their Infant Mortality Rate as one would as they go through the demographic transition model. Preventable diseases are starting to occur less often because the continent is progressing.

Analysis:

           Africa has underwent a lot of changes in the past hundred+ years. Many factors of life, including disease and health has been changed. Right now, the problem has moved from communicable diseases to non-communicable ones such as diabetes, cardiovascular disease and cancer. These diseases are causing a lot of deaths because they cannot be controlled, however, there has been an improvement in the preventable ones. As a result, the life expectancy has risen from 52 years old to 62 in just the last 15 years which is incredible. This was largely because of the decrease in deaths caused by diseases such as malaria, HIV/AIDS, and vaccine preventable ones like measles, and pneumonia. There are variations of that number throughout the different regions of Africa. These characteristics are that of a Stage 3 in the epidemiologic transition. Additionally, life expectancy was previously drastically affected by the Ethiopian drought and famine in the 1980’s as well as the Rwandan genocide in 1994 and the HIV epidemic. So Africa is now slowly but steadily recovering from these catastrophes. Another improvement has been the lowering of the Infant Mortality Rate (IMR) in Africa. It was reduced by over half in some regions from the previous 850,000 children in 1990. This improvement has been steady in the last 15 years. This information from the study is instrumental because it shows Sub-Saharan Africa the areas that they need to work on in order to make life better. Health has changed and availability of treatment needs to be a reflection of that. Overall, Africa is going through an epidemiological transition and climbing up the development scale. Consequently, there has been progress in the health of Africa but it needs to go even further in order to catch up with the rest of the world.