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:

Another take on Britain's ageing population

Hello all, just thought I'd share with you a thrilling article concerning ageing populations I came across the other day. It's by Esther Boserup Rantzen concerning the retirement age for women, particularly in the television presenting sector. She expresses that she is tired of the elderly being seen as a burden on young people and the NHS, and goes on to argue that in fact elderly people do contribute to the economy and general well-being of the country, pointing out that it is in fact old people who allow many of their sons and daughters to work by looking after their grandchildren; which if was left solely to the parents, they wouldn't be able to have such demanding but rewarding careers and would instead have to stay at home looking after the kids. It is also retired volunteers who keep charitable organisations running, and she even uses the example that the "ablest monarch in the world" is our majesty the queen, currently at 84 years of age and still going strong.

Whilst not all the article is necessarily relevant to our ageing population (despite being one of the top results on google news), I urge you to take some time to read the rest of it, as it really is a very interesting and insightful read, which we have come to expect from papers such as the Daily Mail, the respectable publication that it is. :')

Esther's Daily Mail Article on ageing population

Bill Gates: cutting deaths, cutting births.

Bill Gates is known to be a big contributor to aid in less economically developed countries, and uses his wealth to help poor children live better lives. In a recent publicity statement, he has been promoting the amazing effects of child vaccination against deadly diseases from which thousands die unnecessarily from each year, but more relevantly the affect this has on population growth, and consequentially the country's economic development as a whole. Demographers argue that decreasing the amount of child deaths, instead of increasing population growth, actually slows it down. Because more children will survive, it puts less pressure on couples to have large families to ensure that enough of them survive to look after them in the future, and therefore allows them to have fewer children. It also means the family has more money to spend on those children, which increases their chances of being educated and getting a decent job when they grow up. So Mr Gates is absolutely right to try to improve the health care of children in developing countries, not just because of the obvious saving lives, but also because the knock-on effect on the country's population as a whole is a huge step forward in advancing through the demographic stages and become more developed.

China set to finally allow a second child?

After a generation of enforcing the most extreme form of family planning in history, it seems China may finally be beginning to relax the infamous one child policy. The policy, which was initiated in an attempt to slow China's rapidly increasing population in the 1980s, while in many ways being successful at this, brought with it many controversies and other population problems for China. One of the biggest of these being the increased proportion of males, due to the Chinese culture having a preference for baby boys, and therfore many couples who were only allowed one child, were determined that this child be a boy. This means that all these baby boys will struggle to find a bride from the disproportionate amount of girls. In some rural areas, farmers are alreday being allowed to have another child if their first is female, and now pilot projects are being introduced in cities such as Beijing, Shanghai and Tianjin in an attempt to start to reverse this crippling disproportion.

The one child policy has also fastforwarded China into having an aging population. With the medical care to keep death rates low, and the young population being restricted by the policy, China is beginning to experience the problem facing many MEDCs - but before it has properly developed. So while the one child policy was able to slow the growth of China's ever rapidly increasing population in the late 20th century, it has brought with it a whole set of consequences that the country are now having to resolve -  and relaxes like those being introduced in some of the country's largest cities are only a small step towards rectifying a hugely corrupt population structure.