Health
The climate of Africa lends itself to certain environmental diseases, the most serious of which are: malaria, sleeping sickness and yellow fever. Malaria is the most deadly environmental disease in Africa. It is transmitted by a genus of mosquito (anopheles mosquito) native to Africa, and can be contracted over and over again. There is not yet a vaccine for malaria, which makes it difficult to prevent the disease from spreading in Africa. Recently, the dissemination of mosquito netting has helped lower the rate of malaria.
Yellow fever is a disease also transmitted by mosquitoes native to Africa. Unlike malaria, it cannot be contracted more than once. Like chicken pox, it is a disease that tends to be severe the later in life a person contracts the disease.
Sleeping sickness, or African trypanosomiasis, is a disease that usually affects animals, but has been known to be fatal to some humans as well. It is transmitted by the tse tse fly, and is found almost exclusively in Sub-Saharan Africa. This disease has had a significant impact on African development not because of its deadly nature, like Malaria, but because it has prevented Africans from pursuing agriculture (as the sleeping sickness would kill their livestock).
Read more about this topic: Geography Of Africa
Famous quotes containing the word health:
“All health and success does me good, however far off and withdrawn it may appear; all disease and failure helps to make me sad and does me evil, however much sympathy it may have with me or I with it.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“Health is a state of complete physical, mental and social well-being, and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity.”
—Constitution of the World Health Organization.
“The health of the eye seems to demand a horizon. We are never tired, so long as we can see far enough.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)