Health Status in Rural Areas
Health status comparisons are typically assessed through rates of life expectancy, morbidity, and mortality found life expectancy rates to be significantly higher in urban areas when compared to rural areas. Life expectancy in men ranged from 74 years in the most remote areas of Canada to 76.8 years its urban centers. As for women, life expectancy was again lowest in rural areas with an average of 81.3 years. Interestingly, those living in rural areas adjacent to urban centers experience slightly higher rates of life expectancy (men-77.4 years; women- 81.5 years). Likewise, Australian life expectancy ranged from 78 years to 72 years in major cities to very remote locations. In light of these life expectancy rates, it is not surprising that all-cause mortality rates of both Canadian and Australian persons increased as per the level of remoteness. In China, the life expectancy of the female population at birth is 73.59 years in urban areas and 72.46 in rural areas. Male life expectancy is 69.73 years in urban areas and 58.99 in rural areas. Most rural men are hard workers in the agricultural sector and for the most part may not be able to afford health care and the appropriate services may not be available.
The common leading causes of death in rural areas include higher risks of cardiovascular and respiratory diseases, as well as injury (i.e., poisonings, motor vehicle accidents). Again, further adding to the complexities of rural health, there are exceptions to the abovementioned statistics. For instance, opposite trends were found in New Zealand where urban dwellers were more likely to have been diagnosed with heart disease, asthma, arthritis, and osteoporosis than their rural counterparts. These conflicting results confirm that much still needs to be learned regarding the impact of ‘place’ on health.
Read more about this topic: Rural Health
Famous quotes containing the words health, status, rural and/or areas:
“Publicity in women is detestable. Anonymity runs in their blood. The desire to be veiled still possesses them. They are not even now as concerned about the health of their fame as men are, and, speaking generally, will pass a tombstone or a signpost without feeling an irresistible desire to cut their names on it.”
—Virginia Woolf (1882–1941)
“The influx of women into paid work and her increased power raise a woman’s aspirations and hopes for equal treatment at home. Her lower wage and status at work and the threat of divorce reduce what she presses for and actually expects.”
—Arlie Hochschild (20th century)
“What life is best?
Courts are but only superficial schools
To dandle fools:
The rural parts are turned into a den
Of savage men:
And where ‘s a city from all vice so free,
But may be termed the worst of all the three?”
—Francis Bacon (1561–1626)
“The point is, that the function of the novel seems to be changing; it has become an outpost of journalism; we read novels for information about areas of life we don’t know—Nigeria, South Africa, the American army, a coal-mining village, coteries in Chelsea, etc. We read to find out what is going on. One novel in five hundred or a thousand has the quality a novel should have to make it a novel—the quality of philosophy.”
—Doris Lessing (b. 1919)