With Reference to Named Countries, How and Why Do Birth Rates and Life Expectancy /death Rates Vary Between Hic’s and Lic’s?

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common. This is because if Zambia had a large and readily available supply of food and water, the number of people who end up sick due to cholera, tuberculosis, diarrhoea etc would not have to be hospitalised and treated. Currently, only 65% of the country is receiving clean drinking water, which raises the death rate as 35% are struggling and are dying, targeting mainly elder and young children who need it the most whereas countries such as the UK and the USA have 100% and 99%. From this, we can see how the lack of clean water supplies link with diseases making the death rate low. If we look at the rate of AIDS in adults between the UK and Zambia, Zambia has 12.7% and the UK with 0.33%. Zambia has one of the world’s most devastating HIV and AIDS epidemics. Over 1 in every 7 adults is living with HIV 1 and life expectancies at birth have fallen to 49.4 years. Here we are able to see that a country with higher prevalence of disease, the higher the death rate becomes.

Another factor of high birth rates is due to high infant mortality and agricultural reliance. In LIC’s such as Bangladesh, access to clean water is scarce as well as good food supplies meaning mothers are not well nourished and as diseases are widespread, there is a lack of adequate hospital and medical facilities. This means that when women are pregnant, the treatment they receive in the process is very poor as the majority of complications which occur cannot be adequately resolved causing the unborn babies to die. This is because wealth is scarce in such countries and this leads to lack of resources being provided to the medical areas. In sub-Saharan Africa, 1 in 16 women will die in pregnancy or child birth compares to a 1 in 4,000 risk in countries such as the UK. Direct causes of maternal death include haemorrhage, infection, obstructed labour, hypertensive disorder in pregnancy and complications of unsafe abortions. At least 20% of children under 5 are linked to poor maternal health and nutrition and nearly 8 million babies die before or during delivery or within the first week of their lives. Many children are left motherless annually and these children are 10 times more likely to die within the two years of their mothers’ death. Children are very prone to malaria which can lead to anaemia which increases the risk for maternal and infant mortality and development issues for babies. Here, we are able to see that due to insufficient nutrition, a high incidence of infectious diseases, poor health care and a lack of medical supplies, the death rate is much higher in LIC’s than MIC’s.

As a conclusion, the most important factor for why the birth rate varies between LIC’s and HIC’s were social factors, specifically, the availability of education and lack of knowledge of contraception. However the high death rate was due to the poor health care in the countries as medical supplies are knowledge are scarce. Diseases are incurable and basic supplies such as a procedure for pregnancy are unavailable in LIC’s. Political factors are also a factor to birth rates and death rates varying such as the one child policy in China and therefore affecting the rate. War and conflict in countries such as Palestine have high birth rates due to children being born in order to be used later on to help in the army. Finally, countries whom experience natural disasters will lead to high death rates as many countries with water and air pollution results in disease. This is why countries of Low income differ widely compared to High income countries.