lauantaina, syyskuuta 20, 2014

Afrikka on erilainen

The new study also says Africa is likely to see the largest increase in population — from about 3.5 billion to 5.1 billion people — during the next 85 years.
United Nations Population Division Director John Wilmoth, one of the study's authors, says researchers previously anticipated population trends in Africa would follow patterns in other countries, increasing at a slower rate as birth control use became more widespread.
But that has not turned out to be the case.
“The level of contraceptive use has continued to increase but slowly — more slowly than expected — and fertility therefore has been falling less rapidly than expected, and the population therefore continues to grow more rapidly than we expected,” he said.
Research conducted jointly by the United Nations and the University of Washington anticipates the population of Asia will peak at five billion people by 2050, up from 4.4 billion people today.
YK on aikaisemminkin joutunut peräytymään teoriasta, että samat lainalaisuudet pätevät sekä Afrikassa että muissa köyhissä maissa kuten vaikka Bangla Deshissa tai Intiassa. Maailman terveysjärjestö mm. myönsi, että AIDS-epidemia ei tule koskaan leviämään Afrikan ulkopuolelle
A quarter of a century after the outbreak of Aids, the World Health Organisation (WHO) has accepted that the threat of a global heterosexual pandemic has disappeared.

In the first official admission that the universal prevention strategy promoted by the major Aids organisations may have been misdirected, Kevin de Cock, the head of the WHO's department of HIV/Aids said there will be no generalised epidemic of Aids in the heterosexual population outside Africa.
...
Dr De Cock said: "It is very unlikely there will be a heterosexual epidemic in other countries. Ten years ago a lot of people were saying there would be a generalised epidemic in Asia – China was the big worry with its huge population. That doesn't look likely. But we have to be careful. As an epidemiologist it is better to describe what we can measure. There could be small outbreaks in some areas."

... why is the situation so bad in sub-Saharan Africa? It is a combination of factors – more commercial sex workers, more ulcerative sexually transmitted diseases, a young population and concurrent sexual partnerships.

Sexual behaviour is obviously important but it doesn't seem to explain [all] the differences between populations. Even if the total number of sexual partners [in sub-Saharan Africa] is no greater than in the UK, there seems to be a higher frequency of overlapping sexual partnerships creating sexual networks that, from an epidemiological point of view, are more efficient at spreading infection. 

Kansankokonaisuuden selitys Afrikan erilliselle kehitykselle on biologia. Seksuaalikäyttäytymisen erot selittyvät käsittääkseni ainakin osin biologialla siinä missä erot maiden taloudellisessa kehityksessäkin.

Suhtaudun omaan hypoteesiini, joka perustuu Tatu Vanhasen ja Richard Lynnin kirjoihin,  kuitenkin avoimin mielin. Esimerkiksi markkinatalouden esteiden purkaminen on Afrikassakin edistänyt talouskasvua joissain sellaisissakin maissa, missä raaka-aineita ei juuri ole. Kirjoitin aiheesta jo aiemmin laajasti vuonna 2012. Mm. Botswanan, Ruandan ja Etiopian kehitys on ollut tehokkaan talouspolitiikan ansiosta ripeää.

Seksuaalikäyttäytyminen ei kuitenkaan, kuten vuoden 2012 kirjoituksessanikin osoitin, ole seurannut talouskehitystä. Botswanan BKT oli tuohon aikaan jo Latvian tasoa, mutta elinijänodote oli AIDS-epidemian takia romahtanut alle 40-vuoden, koska seksuaalikäyttäytyminen on lievästi sanoen holtitonta.

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