Life expectancy
LIFE EXPECTANCY IN DEVELOPING COUNTRIES
Every country measures life expectancy as an index to express the average of years for a person to live in the scale of mortality indicator of a certain period (OECD, 2007). This index is usually affected by particular conditions such as health, education and specific factors of the country or territory. These characteristics have become this index one of the most important signs to quantity human development all over the globe. Although the modern world has brought an increasing of longevity, it is not necessarily associated with a better life quality, the inequalities between rich and poor societies seem to build an enormous gap in the quality of life, which contributes as well to the age of a person. This essay will discuss two reasons that affect the indicator in developing countries and the possible solutions.
Health conditions are usually a vital contributing factor of liveability. The World Health Organization (1948) defines health as “a state of complete physical, mental and social well-being and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity”. In this context, we could say that prevention of diseases lead to a healthy population thus a higher life expectancy. But transferring this into the developing nations’ context the imminent differences are immersed the lack of the quality in health care system, because “outside the rich countries, average health is strongly correlated with income” (Cutler, 2006). Even though in least-developed countries the reason of mortality and life expectancy are easy to identify, in the case of developing economies the distribution of resources and social inequalities appear to be the main motives. In the case of Mexico there were 70,281 deaths in 2013 due to diabetes type 2 (International Diabetes Federation, 2013), many of these deaths because of bad diet habits and restricted access to health care services.
The access to quality health services could make a difference for nations’
Every country measures life expectancy as an index to express the average of years for a person to live in the scale of mortality indicator of a certain period (OECD, 2007). This index is usually affected by particular conditions such as health, education and specific factors of the country or territory. These characteristics have become this index one of the most important signs to quantity human development all over the globe. Although the modern world has brought an increasing of longevity, it is not necessarily associated with a better life quality, the inequalities between rich and poor societies seem to build an enormous gap in the quality of life, which contributes as well to the age of a person. This essay will discuss two reasons that affect the indicator in developing countries and the possible solutions.
Health conditions are usually a vital contributing factor of liveability. The World Health Organization (1948) defines health as “a state of complete physical, mental and social well-being and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity”. In this context, we could say that prevention of diseases lead to a healthy population thus a higher life expectancy. But transferring this into the developing nations’ context the imminent differences are immersed the lack of the quality in health care system, because “outside the rich countries, average health is strongly correlated with income” (Cutler, 2006). Even though in least-developed countries the reason of mortality and life expectancy are easy to identify, in the case of developing economies the distribution of resources and social inequalities appear to be the main motives. In the case of Mexico there were 70,281 deaths in 2013 due to diabetes type 2 (International Diabetes Federation, 2013), many of these deaths because of bad diet habits and restricted access to health care services.
The access to quality health services could make a difference for nations’