Examine the View That Rapid Population Growth Will Prevent Some Countries from Meeting Their Millenium Development Goals

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Overpopulation conduces spreading diseases and creates bigger demand for healthcare. This situation imposes a trade-off between quantity and quality. Even thought more people get healthcare, it will be low quality and not effective. It won’t help combat HIV/aids, malaria and other diseases. Malaria is still one of the leading killers of children and women in sub saharian countries. Althought in Sierra Leone access to insecticide-treated nets (ITNs) has increased for children under five, from 5% in 2005 to 25.8% in 2008, the proportion of people receiving appropriate antimalaria treatment decreased from 45% to 30.1%. The same obstacles intrude reducing child mortality rates and improving maternal health.

Further, rapid population growth doesn’t makes achieving first and seventh Millenium Development Goals (eradicating poverty and hunger, and ensuring environmental sustainability) either. They will be significantly affected, due to more people competing for limited farm land and primitive and extensive farming. In Sierra Leone this 2 MDGs are impossible to be met. The poverty head count stands at about 55% and only 40% of the population has access to improved sanitation .

The essay has shown that the rapid population growth makes Millenium Development Goals hard or even impossible to be met. Population problems indirectly affect most of the goals. It restrains investments in human capital, such as the education and healthcare. It imposes trade-off between quantity and quality and makes efforts to improve human services inaffective. Moreover, overpopulation intensify poverty, hunger and enviromental unsustainability. It will probably prevent some countries form meeting their MDGs.