Death and Disease in Africa Essay

Although the !Kung San of southern Africa differ greatly from the people in the west African nation of Mali, both areas share similar problems. Both suffer from diseases, illnesses, malnutrition, and having to adapt to the ever changing and advancing cultures around them. What I found to be the most significant problem that is shared between both areas is that the people suffered from a lack of education. In the book Dancing Skeletons: Life and Death in West Africa by Katherine A. Dettwyler, there is a lack of education in proper nutritional practices, taking care of children and newborns, and basic medical knowledge and practices. The Dobe Ju/’hoansi have recently started putting in schools to help children receive an education to help

Nearly three decades ago, there was an increase in deaths of HIV in sub-Saharan Africa. Developing countries have experienced the greatest HIV/AIDS morbidity and mortality, with the highest prevalence rates recorded in young adults in sub-Saharan Africa. In South Africa over three million people are killed by this disease (Macfarlene3). After this epidemic spreaded in Africa and killed people it branched out to other countries in the world.

HIV/AIDS has been responsible for one of the worst epidemics in history. In her book “The Invisible Cure” Helen Epstein details why Africa in particular was so devastated by the disease, which countries failed and which succeeded in the struggle to contain the virus, and why this happened. Epstein highlights a particular phenomenon, that first took place in Uganda, but which can be translated to many countries and situations, and which she calls “the invisible cure.”

There are an immense amount of problems in Africa caused by the AIDS disease. Healthcare providers are available and located all over Africa. Even though they are available, they have only “enough medicine for long-term survival available for 30,000 Africans” (Copson, 3).

The world as a whole should be mortified by what is happening in Sub-Saharan Africa. In places like Swaziland, Botswana, Lesotho poverty, crime and systematic corruption are the tinder for the fire that is the HIV epidemic in Africa.

AIDS or acquired immune deficiency syndrome is a disease where a person regardless of race or gender can get infected and have no chance of survival. AIDS started in the 1980’s to move from human to human. In a event were sex kills this is the one. In 1995, AIDS was the leading cause of death for adults 25 to 44 years old. But in recent years treatments help the survival and prolonged life of many with AIDS yet the disease still resides within them and they are dangerous to the well being of

In The Invisible Cure, Helen Epstein talks about why HIV/AIDS rate is so high in Africa compared to the rest of the world. Through the book, she gives us an account of the disease and the struggles that many health experts and ordinary Africans went through to understand this disease, and how different African countries approached the same problem differently. Through this paper, I will first address the different ways Uganda and Southern African countries, South Africa and Botswana in particular, dealt with this epidemic, and then explain how we can use what we have learned from these African countries to control outbreaks of communicable disease elsewhere around the world.

“During 2010 alone, an estimated 1.2 million adults and children died as a result of AIDS-

AMY: One solution that is being implemented in order to create fairness in the underdeveloped countries in order to get treatment for HIV / AIDS is evaluating the possibility of non-retroviral interventions such as vitamin A supplements. studies found that the woman that took vitamin A had a decreased chance of getting infected with the virus compared to the subjects that took the placebo which did in fact get infected. Another cheap and effective way to stop the transmission of

The residents of Africa are suffering from preventable, treatable, and fatal diseases everyday at a higher rate compared to developed countries. The healthcare crisis in Africa is the primary cause of all these deaths, and includes inefficient healthcare systems. Consequently, African's inefficient healthcare systems results in poor delivery of care and a shortage of health professionals. The healthcare crisis in Africa is a current issue impacting the lives of many African's who don't have the same access to resources as developed countries such as the United States. These resources can save the lives of many African's dying of preventable and curable disease, and understanding why the African continent has little access to them

Although ninety-five percent of people living with HIV/AIDS are in developing countries, the impact of this epidemic is global. In South Africa, where one in four adults are living with the disease, HIV/AIDS means almost certain death for those infected. In developed countries however, the introduction of antiretroviral drugs has meant HIV/AIDS is treated as a chronic condition rather than a killer disease. In developing countries like South Africa, the drugs that allow people to live with the disease elsewhere in the world, are simply too expensive for individuals and governments to afford at market price.

The most recent UNAIDS/WHO estimates show that, in 1999 alone, 5.4 million people were newly infected with HIV [9].

Sub-Saharan Africa is the region of the world that is most affected by HIV/AIDS. The United Nations reports that an estimated 25.4 million people are living with HIV and that approximately 3.1 million new infections occurred in 2004. To put these figures in context, more than 60 percent of the people living with the infection reside in Africa. Even these staggering figures do not quite capture the true extent and impact that this disease causes on the continent. In 1998, about 200,000 Africans died as a result of various wars taking place on the continent. In that same year, more than 2 million succumbed to HIV/AIDS (Botchwey, 2000).

HIV is a virus that is spread almost all over the world. Although in some places health care isn’t as developed and therefore it spreads more in those regions. Sub-Saharan Africa holds more than 70%, 25 million, of all HIV positive people in the world. Second highest is Eastern Europe together with Central Asia with 1.3 million. It is spread over most of the world, including Asia and the Pacific, the Caribbean, Central and South America, North Africa and the Middle East and Western and Central Europe (“The Regional Picture”).

Family size is also a huge contributor to the population catastrophe. Generally, a family in this region is consisted of around five to six children (Bridge). The reason for women to bare so many children is because of the high risk of infant mortality. Since children’s health has improved in the 1980’s, women continued to have the same number of kids. However, more lived, which then pushed fertility rates even higher (World Religions, Environment, Development 233). In order for Sub Saharan to stabilize their flourishing