Life Expectancy in Africa Continues Decline
Africa is the only region, to my knowledge, in which the life expectancy has been declining over the past two decades, and it looks like the life expectancy there will continue to decline for the forseeable future.
According to a recent conference on African population issues held in Ethiopia, average life expectancy in Africa has declined by almost 15 years over the past two decades. The biggest culprit is infectious disease. AIDS and other infectious diseases are pushing life expectancy to extremely low rates in several African countries.
In both Botswana and Malawi, for example, life expectancy is below 40 years according to UNAIDS. By 2005, according to the recent conference, life expectancy for Africa as a whole be only 48 years, compared to 74.9 and 81.2 years for European men and women respectively.
Source:
Life expectancy still falling in Africa. The BB, February 11, 2002.
The Life Expectancy in Africa Continues Decline by Brian Carnell, unless otherwise expressly stated, is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 License.
Tags: AIDS/HIV, Botswana, Life Expectancy, Malawi