• Question: why is it that Africa has the most deadly diseases?

    Asked by erinmason30 to Anouk, Chris, Judith, Leisha, Seyyed on 20 Jun 2012.
    • Photo: Anouk Gouvras

      Anouk Gouvras answered on 20 Jun 2012:

      The most deadly disease in Africa are the common diseases that are associated with poverty and low socioeconomic status (this is a term used to describe an individual/family/community’s level of income, education and occupation). The following diseases are the biggest killers (in terms of numbers of deaths per year) in developing countries.

      One the biggest killers are the pathogens that cause acute respiratory infections such as pneumonia, estimated to kill around 4 million people in developing countries every year

      AIDS caused by the virus HIV kills about 3 million people in developing countries every year

      Dysentery also known as diarrhoea, which can be caused by a number of pathogens kills about 2.2 million people every year

      Malaria, caused by a blood parasites transmitted through the bite of a female mosquito, kills between 1 and 5 million people every year

      And finally Tuberculosis is a big killer in Africa and developing countries, about 2 million people die of TB every year.

    • Photo: Chris Kettle

      Chris Kettle answered on 20 Jun 2012:

      why? Possibley as it is a porr nation with a large population and poor healthcare. We are a country that has a good health care system and we are well looked after and can get medical help quickly. Why there are so many? The climate is probabaly a massive factor. This and the lack of health care and poor water hygiene, general hygiene etc means that disease spread and evolve quickly.

    • Photo: Judith Sleeman

      Judith Sleeman answered on 21 Jun 2012:

      Mostly for economic reasons. People in poor African nations die from diseases that we would easily prevent or cure here, or that are spread by poor sanitation. In London, before the Victorians realised that water could spread diseases and built sewers to separate drinking water from sewage, diseases such as Cholera were rife. Now they’re pretty much unheard of. The tragedy in developing nations is that we know full well how important clean water is, but the money to make sure everyone has access to it is simply not there.

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