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floods in Pakistan

The global drowning death rate has fallen by 38 percent since 2000, reports the WHO. The death rate from drowning has fallen in every part of the Earth, although by only 3% in Africa. Drowning has fallen by 38% in the Americas, 68% in Europe, and 48% in southeast Asia.

This has contributed to the fall in child mortality that has occurred on every continent. “While drowning is nowhere near to being a leading cause of death for the general population, it is in the top five causes of death for those younger than 14,” notes The Doomslayer.

While Africa has made less progress than most of the world in reducing drowning deaths, it is getting rid of diseases that have inflicted great suffering for thousands of years. Last year, the west African nation of Guinea eradicated sleeping sickness, a parasitic disease carried by the tsetse fly. If left untreated, sleeping sickness causes irreversible brain damage and then death. Sleeping sickness is an awful disease that begins with fever, aches, and joint pain. Then things get worse. The parasite that causes the disease will disrupt sleeping patterns and cause aggressiveness, psychosis, and bizarre behavior.

Another west African country, Niger, became the first nation in Africa to eliminate river blindness, which can make you blind and is spread by flies that breed near rivers. Carried by those flies are long thin parasitic worms that burrow in the sufferer’s skin. Niger managed to eradicate this disease even though it is one of the world’s dozen poorest countries.

Meanwhile, malaria was eliminated from Egypt after a century-long campaign. The southern African nation of Zimbabwe is eradicating a disease that is the leading infectious cause of blindness. Drones are also providing vaccines to immunize hundreds of thousands of children in the west African nation of Ghana, protecting them against potentially lethal diseases.