1. Define the following terms as related to the human population:
(i) Population explosion
(ii) Death rate
2. Explain five factors that influence the death rate in Tropical Africa.
3. Outline three effects of a growing population in Tropical Africa.
Explanation
1. (i) The rapid increase in numbers of a particular species, especially in the world’s human population since the end of World War II, attributed to an accelerating birthrate, a decrease in infant mortality, and an increase in life expectancy.
(ii) Mortality rate, or death rate, is a measure of the number of deaths in a particular population, scaled to the size of that population, per unit of time.
2. Level of nutrition: The t children, especially those under five years of age, die due to a lack of nutritious foods. A balanced diet is a must for healthy living. There are deficiency diseases caused by protein, energy, carbohydrate, malnutrition and also by micro-nutrient deficiencies. These are the causes of high death rates.
Health services: Most people in rural areas are deprived of health services for various reasons. The reasons may be their affordability and availability of health services. Even if health services are available, they are unaware of health hazards and health care due to a lack of health education. People die because of air and water-borne diseases, unhygienic surroundings and unhealthy sanitary conditions.
Diseases: Diseases are the major causes of death. Some diseases are curable, and some are fatal. However, due to scientific inventions in health care services, People have overcome many diseases, which ones used to be fatal. But there are still some diseases like cancer, HIV/AIDS and others that are not curable and fatal.
Health Education: The health knowledge, attitude and practice of the people help to make the surroundings and life of the people neat, clean and healthy. If people have no knowledge about it, they do not practice and the death rate increases.
Natural calamities: We have also faced various natural calamities or disasters. People in some places suffer from floods and landslides, whereas others face calamities like earthquakes. Famine can be another calamity in some places. So, mortality is also affected by them.
3. Energy consumption, carbon emissions, air pollution and human congestion.