Disease of Affluence

In an earlier post we looked at a disease of poverty. Now we shall look at a disease of affluence, which is currently causing a pandemic across the developed world and is causing millions of people immense suffering.

This is the virus of Rebecca Black's Friday. So far she has infected over 40million people. Who knows if anyone will ever be able to stop her.

World Tuberculosis Day 2011

Today is World TB day, which aims to raise awareness about the threat of TB, and the effect it is still having in many areas of the world today.
Whilst in the western world of More Economically Developed Countries the risk of contracting, and even more so dying, of TB is very small, but in some of the poorest parts of the world, the disease is still killing millions of people, and yet is known to be curable. The following map shows the rough distribution of the disease around the world today:

As you can see, whilst very few cases of TB occur in the more developed countries such as North America, Europe, and Australia, and bearing in mind that the vast majority of people contracting the disease in these areas should recover due to the medical facilities, areas such as Central Africa, Brazil, and much of East Asia still have very high rates of the disease, with many of these areas not having the money to pay for the medical care to cure people, hence many of the cases tragically resulting in death.

Symptoms of pulmonary TB include stuff like persistent cough (LIKE ME) which may bring up blood, signs of breathlessness, lack of appetite, fever, weight loss, and fatigue. In some cases of TB, the infection is not just confined to the lungs and spreads to other parts of the body, which is called Extrapulmonary Tuberculosis, and can lead to extra symptoms such as aches and pains in the areas to which it has spread, as well as things like diarrhoea, vomiting, and urinating blood.

Treatment for TB is taking antibiotics, with isonaizid and rifampicin being two commonly used examples. However, some strains of TB become drug resistant, which is very bad. The worst thing is that whilst it is generally curable, yet in poor areas they cannot afford the drugs to save people's lives from it once they get infected.

World Distribution of Obesity

According to an article in the Daily Mail,  people living in the US are, on average, the fattest people in the world. No surprises there then. American men and women reportedly have an average bmi of over 28, according to figures from the World Health Organisation. This is regarded as overweight, and for the average of the country to be this low is extremely worrying. Even Britain isn't that far behind, with an average of around 27, and that our women are on average the fattest in western Europe.
The graphs below show the world distribution of obesity, with the darker the colour, the fatter the country on average is:

As expected, lots of the more developed countries have high bmis, but there also some exceptions in north africa and south america. bmi of course, cannot always be trusted however, as muscle isn't taken into consideration.
Obesity brings with it all sorts of health risks, such as high cholesterol, blood pressure, and diabetes, which is why it needs to be taken seriously as increasing amounts of people are putting themselves in serious data.

Migration.

Migration. Movement, essentially. Most commonly used in conjunction with the movement of people, but migration also occurs with:

• Animals, such as;

Disloyal Order Of Water Buffaloes

• Meanders;

Little Meander of a river

In the UK, since the relaxation of movement within the EU, we have seen an increased number of Eastern European migrants coming to reside in our country. Because what the migrants earn back home is so little, employers can get away with paying Polish and other Eastern European workers less than they would for a British worker, as they are still being paid more than they would be at home and are happy to work for these wages. Because of this, many British people claim that polish migrants are stealing all our jobs. Many of the jobs these migrants occupy however, are often ones which British people refuse to do anyway, and that the migrants are often benefitting our economy, not to mention their positive impact on our ageing population structure. And I really wish there were a way of changing the language on Safari from "English US" (which doesn't even exist; if you want to speak our language, do it properly) to "English UK". The inappropriately placed red lines where Americans can't spell is really beginning to annoying me. And now that little distraction has meant I can use "however" again; I feared using it in two consecutive sentences would look a bit silly. (anyway, back on track) However, there is some evidence to support claims that polish migrants are in fact stealing our jobs. If you take the case study of a particular restaurant chain (which will not be named here for legal reasons), there is evidence of discrimination against caucasian british workers, with increased levels of polish workers being employed due to a particular manager high up the food chain with polish connections providing jobs, and not just the scummy jobs that no one here wants to do, for friends in Poland when they come over, even mistreating existing British workers so that they resign and make more vacancies for their polish friends. So things are never as they quite seem with migration, and there are always more than one side to the story. So don't necessarily believe all that the Daily Mail tells you - or in this case maybe even your geography teacher. 

Philoso-active: Aristotle believed that the prime mover was Lewis!...

Philoso-active: Aristotle believed that the prime mover was Lewis!...: "Aristotle believed that the prime mover was Lewis!"

yes, yes he did.

(and if this comes out in times new roman i'll go scitz)

edit: but, it appears it hasn't so, all is well. :)

just a spot of lite reading for you all:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cat_communication 



enjoy. :)

Ageing populations and pro-natal policies

Ageing populations is one of the most pressing demographic challenges for many MEDCs today, because of the socio-economic pressures the unbalanced population structure puts on the country, which I feel like I have spent half my life writing about. 

In the UK, whilst we do have an ageing population, which we most certainly need to address, a recent article in the telegraph points out that we are actually ageing slower than most of the rest of Europe. For example, it states that countries like Germany and Italy have around 20% of the population being over 65 and of retirement age, compared to just 16% in the UK. Japan however, has 22% of its population over 65 years of age, which is starting to cause the country real issues, hence why they have introduced pro-natal policies to try and increase the fertility rate and balance the population and dependency ratio, which the following video i made explores: