Global Health Patterns
Global patterns of health, mortality and morbidity
- Spatial variations in patterns of health exist and these patterns change over time
- Various measures of health are used
- Mortality rates can be measured in different ways
- In less developed countries this is due to poor socio-economic resources leading to lower life expectancy
- In developed countries this is due to higher life expectancies leading to ageing populations
- Infant mortality, case mortality and attack rate tend to be higher in developing countries with the highest rates generally in sub-Saharan Africa
- High crude death rates exist in all regions of the world
- World Health Organisation (WHO) uses healthy life expectancy (HALE), which refers to how long a person can be expected to live in good health without significant disease or injury
- 2000 average for Africa was 45.8 years
- 2019 figures for HALE at birth show a global average of 63.7 years with Western Oceania (68.6) and Europe (68.3) having the highest regional average, and Africa (56.0) the lowest
- HALE is increasing in every region of the world
- Morbidity patterns vary according to two different types of illness:
- Non-communicable disease is often more prevalent in HICs due to higher proportions of elderly population.
- Older people are more likely to suffer from some cancers and heart conditions
- Increasing affluence can lead to unhealthy lifestyles and sugary diets which can lead to a higher risk of developing cancer, diabetes and heart disease
- Non-communicable diseases - medical conditions that are not infectious such as asthma, cancer and heart disease
- Communicable diseases - infectious conditions that can be passed from person-to-person such as malaria, HIV/AIDS and coronavirus
- LICs are more likely to see higher rates of communicable disease due to poor quality of water supply, less education around healthy lifestyles, poor quality of sanitation and health care
- High rates of morbidity do not always translate into high rates of mortality
- Depends on level and quality of healthcare and medicines
- In Africa 79 out of 100,000 got some form of cancer in 2012. In North America the figure was 510 out of 100,000
- But 55 out of 100,000 died from cancer in Africa, a 70% incidence to death rate In North America 197 died, a 39% incidence to death rate
Exam Tip
Make sure you can define all the key terms in this section. You might get asked a 4 mark question on them but they are just as useful used in the higher tariff questions to show your knowledge and understanding of ideas and processes. This is what is known as Assessment Objective One (AO1) and this type of knowledge is worth half the marks in your A level papers.
