Geography Blog

Cholera disease

2011-03-19T14:08:00.000-07:00

Cholera is an infection in the small intestines. The main symptoms are watery diarrhea and vomiting. It gets transmitted mainly through contaminated food or water. The continuous vomiting can sometimes lead to dehydration. Worldwide it affects 3-5 million people every year, also causing 100,000-130,000 deaths a year.

The diagnosis of cholera is with a rapid dip stick test; if positive then they carry out further tests to determine the anti-biotic resistance. In an epidemic, short examinations and history may be used to make the diagnosis.

However, preventing this disease is not difficult. Sanitation is one of the main ways in which this disease can be prevented; in developed countries with high levels of sanitation cholera is not a major health threat. Things that come into contact with cholera should be sterilized by washing with hot water. Sewage should also be treated with anti-bacterial, as well as water sterilization should all be done to keep cholera out.

Cholera may currently be present in Asia, Middle East, Africa, parts of Europe, South and Central America, including Mexico.

Healthcare around the world.

2011-02-21T12:15:00.000-08:00

The United Kingdom:

The public sector is funded by tax, and also some of national insurance contributions. This health care is known as the NHS (national health service).Only about 11% of the population have private health insurance, which is a small amount. The healthcare provided is free at the point of delivery, but sometimes you do have to pay for things like prescription. However, this is only a small number as the majority of people are exempt from this due to being; elderly, a child or unemployed. There are free ambulances as part of this service and access to accident and emergency. The hospitals are semi-autnomous self-governing public trust.

United States:

In the US it is private sector funded. There is private health insurance availible through the employer, government or private schemes. The federal government is the largest is the largest health insurer. There are two main schemes which it runs: Mediaid and Medicare. But still 15.3% of the population do not have health insurance. Most doctors work privately and are paid through a combination of charges, discounted fees paid by private health plans and direct patient fees.

France:

France have something which is called a social health scheme. This is where all legal residents have public health insurance which has to be compulsory funded by the employer. Few still have to pay for areas which are not covered under this scheme and many still pay to be able to see a doctor. The government regulates and contributes to some sickness funds. Most out of patient care is delivered by doctors and dentists working in their own practices.

Singapore:

Singapore has something called a duel system. This is funded by both private and public sectors. The public funds 80% of hospital carea and 20% primary care. It is financed in a variety of ways, some taxes, employee medical benefits and quite a lot paid bty their own pockets. The patients are expected to pay some of their medical expenses and have to pay more for a higher service of healthcare.

Immigration into the USA, latest stories.

2011-01-09T12:48:00.000-08:00

This map shows where migrants go.

Immigration and customs inforcment agents say that they have cracked down on the fake documents being used by Hispanic migrants to get into the South Carolina Grand Strand, and also other nearby regions. It is believed that some of the false documents were distributed by Mytrle Beach, S.C.

Other previous stories are that a seventeen-year-old Ramses Barron Torres was killed in Arizona he was from Mexico. It was claimed by other illegal immigrants that he was killed by border patrol in early January 2011, but he was not an immigrant himself. Supposedly he was just in the area, however from there perspective it was said that Torres and his friends were throwing rocks at the patrol as they were investigating drug smugglers. Torres was on the American side of the border, but him and his friends were trying to scramble back.

China's anti-natal, one child policy.

2010-12-08T13:01:00.000-08:00

China’s one child policy has plenty of positive and negative aspects to it. In 1970 the average women had 6 children in China, now it is only two; it has prevented more than 250 million births in the country. To encourage the population to only have one child they have come up with incentives such as the one-child certificate. They will get other surpluses such as; an extra month’s wages until the child is 14, also they are giving interest free loans, retirement funds are boosted, better housing and healthcare and finally priority to school enrolment. The country has had great success with the policy, especially as only 37.5% of the population are under it excluding cities like Hong Kong.

Some of the negatives that have been perceived from the one child policy are people cheating the system. Some children are shuffled to live with relatives and their surnames are just simply changed, resulting in an estimated 6 million undocumented children. Moreover this in May 2007 riots broke out in Bobai and Shabei , between 300 and 3000 people participated in the demonstrations. Furthermore in the 1980s there were rumours that human rights had been breached, some extreme cases torture had been reported.

I think that the once child policy has had a great success in China in helping reduce the population, however I believe that despite them not reviewing the policy until 2050 they should investigate it sooner. Because I believe that if they let the policy continue for too long than they may suffer from an ageing population.

Ageing Population and the effects

2010-11-21T11:07:00.000-08:00

In the UK it is predicted that in 2050 the population of the people aged 65 and over will have almost doubled. Also the government have predicted that the predicted average male life expectancy at 65 will rise to 21.0 in 2030 and 21.7 by 2050. Christchurch in Dorset is known to be the “pensioners” capital of England, one in three of them being retirement age. This is because pensioners usually migrate to coastal areas or by the sea side.

United Kingdom's population pyramid for 2050.

The impacts of this are things such as healthcare, the higher the population of older people the more cost needed for the healthcare with things that are wrong with them, therefore the health costs are compressed into the later year of lives. This process is called compression of morbidity. Not only this but other impacts that this has is on retired people’s pensions. Because of more of the population being retired it requires more money to be paid into pensions, as they may not be enough younger people to afford to pay for it. There has, however been some suggestions made to prevent this from happening such as; pensioners become poorer , taxes and national insurance contributions go up, rate that people save for retirement increases or the average age of retirement go up. A final impact of all this is that more housing is required for older people. They need specialist homes such as bungalows where access to other rooms isn’t a problem. Other things that will be in higher demand will be nursing homes; a further knock onto this is the need for more people to work within these homes.

In England it is said that councils will struggle with ageing population, at the moment 9 billion pound is spent a year on council care. It is predicted that by 2026 it will double.

Less child deaths, less overpopulation

2010-11-08T09:54:00.000-08:00

It is said that 500,000 kids die every year from a diarrhoeal disease; however this has been unnoticed by the public. But if something could be done about this and more children’s lives could be saved than it could result in less overpopulation. The result of overpopulation is the need of more money, the more money needed the harder it is to spread the resources of sanitation, food and clothes. It is believed that most parents in less economically developed countries only want small families, but the problem arises when the mother isn’t confident that all of her children will make it, so she has to have twice as many. But when she knows that her first few children will survive she can invest more money in her family. A new organisation has recently been put together to spread our vaccines to the very poorest countries in the world. This organisation is called GAVI (the global alliance for vaccines and immunisation). Since 1980 measles has gone down by a staggering 93 per cent!

Check out gavi's support group on facebook!
http://www.facebook.com/GAVIAlliance?v=wall#!/GAVIAlliance

Pakistan flood continues to have devastating effects on lives.

2010-09-11T08:37:00.000-07:00

After fasting from Ramadan finished celebrations were supposed to be carried out, however the effect of the floods still carries misery for a lot of people in Pakistan. It started nearly 6 weeks ago and is the worst floods Pakistan have ever seen! It killed more than 1750 people and caused 43 billion US dollars worth of damage. Although the floods have come to a near finish and water levels are lowering, citizens in Pakistan are still living in camps because their houses have been destroyed and livelihood has been lost. Leaving friends and family lost across the nation. Not only this, but the prolonged affects are that millions of children could carry diseases, causing more financial strain on the nation and possibly increasing the death toll for this awful natural disaster. This shows how devastating floods can be and how they can destroy lives, but it also shows how lucky people in Boscastle were in 2004, after no life was lost in their devastating floods.