Case Study: Gambias Youthful Population

As Gambia is an LEDC, they lack the funds to employ a extensive amount of doctors to the area. This means that for every doctor, at that practice are 14,536 patients meaning that the inhabitants dont receive much healthcare. This has contributed to a comparatively short life expectancy of just 54 days for a man and 57 years for a woman. The lack of healthcare available has excessively meant that there is an extremely high gear child death value rate of 73 per 1000 concourse, even though it is lower than it has been in the past. As more children expose at an early age, parents tend to have a super number of children to help with daily tasks, to make a higher income to the family and to look after the parents when they stumble ill health. Gambia has a high birth rate of 40 per 1000 people beca subprogram of this and in 2003, the mean(a) fertility rate was 5.13.What are the positive and prejudicious impacts?Due the high birth rate, falling infant mortality rate and impr ove handsts in the level of healthcare available, the creation has been increasing rapidly. In fact, Gambias population double every 28 years and in 2009, it is estimated to be around 1.7million people.63.55% of the population is estimated to be senior(a) under 25 years and only 3.36% of the population is aged over 65 years. This had meant that there is a high dependency ratio of 86100 running(a) people. Each working person has to earn plenty to support 1.86 people including themselves, which makes trying to earn a living in an LEDC an even harder task than it already is.In the future, it impart become harder to find booking and accommodation and even more(prenominal) stress will be put on food resources, the foot and the health service, which is already struggling. However, also in the future, there will probably be a large and cheap workforce. Overall, the Gambias youthful population is not an summation to the country.What are the policies/solutions being put in place t o help the situation?One of the solutions to the youthful population of Gambia has been The Gambia Family Planning Radio Project. This was a 2-year education, culture and communication campaign which used radio set dramas ( take a leakd Fakube Jarra) aimed at less-educated women in Gambia in order to better propound them about family planning options and change their attitudes to family life. This project was considered to be a success, based on the findings of a canvass carried out on 400 randomly selected men and women in 1991. Those who had comprehend the radio drama could name more methods of contraception than those who had not and they tended to have more positive attitudes to family life. The most important observation was that those who had heard the radio drama were more likely to use a method of contraception than those who had not. The number of people using contraception increased from 10% to 27%, so it nearly tripled.The Gambia Family Planning Association were the ones who initiated this radio campaign and they have also made many further attempts to alleviate the problems associated with a youthful population, such(prenominal) as running 8 family planning clinics end-to-end Gambia. The association focuses mainly on increasing sentience of the contraception available and knowledge of how to use it, whilst also encouraging smaller families and changing the attitudes of the adults living in Gambia. All in all, the results have been very positive.