Across the globe, Lesotho falls in the top 2 leading countries with low life expectancy. The research shows that the major cause of low life expectancy in Lesotho is HIV/AIDS.  As of this writing, Lesotho is in the second rank across the globe when it comes to HIV/AIDS infections.

What is life expectancy?

Life expectancy is the average lifespan for members of a country expected to live up to. It is also a statistical projection of current conditions. Life expectancy is the useful way of summarizing the mortality rate for a country.

• Mortality rate

This is the number of deaths given in a period.

What life expectancy is not?

Life expectancy is not the age someone can expect to live up to starting from the current time. It is also not how long someone born today will live. Life expectancy is not how long the previous generation lived. Life expectancy is also not a prediction or a forecast of what will happen in the future.

How to measure life expectancy

There are several ways of determining the life expectancy of a country. In most cases, life expectancy is determined by using the registration of people dying in a country.

How demographers determine life expectancy of people who are alive?

Demographers put together the population of people who are alive into ages. From the age groupings, they calculate the average number of people who die during the year.

10 things that determine life expectancy

• Gender
• Smoking status
• Education
• Housing
• Climate
• Genetics
• Occupation
• City infrastructure
• Political Stability
• Age

Life expectancy in Lesotho

As of this writing, Lesotho’s life expectancy is 54.9. Lesotho is a landlocked country which is found within Republic of South Africa. It has an estimated population of 2.2 million. I already indicated in the beginning of this article that Lesotho falls in the top 2 countries which have a low life expectancy.

This means that Basotho are expected to live up to 54-55 years. However, there are people in Lesotho who still exceed the life expectancy rate. Based on the current situations of Lesotho, you are considered lucky if you live longer than 55 years.

Why does Lesotho have a low life expectancy rate?

Below are the reasons why life expectancy is so low in Lesotho:

• HIV/AIDS: 

By far the most important of the facts about life expectancy in Lesotho is that it has the second-highest rate of HIV/AIDS in the world. Most people die due to this pandemic disease.

In some cases, people die of HIV/AIDS because they don’t want to get tested. Some people die because they don’t want to take medication for HIV/AIDS. It is a struggle in families who have people infected with this pandemic.

• Unemployment: Landlocked in Southern Africa, Lesotho has always depended on neighbors for employment. Most of the working population traveled to South African mines for work, but recent retrenchment has left 24 to 28 percent of people jobless and without income.

Apart from that, if there is a high unemployment rate among the youth, how will eat healthy yet we don’t have jobs! Eating healthy costs money, and people don’t have money.

• Low Agricultural Output: Only a small portion of Lesotho’s land is arable enough for steady crop growth. This combined with recent droughts has created intense food scarcity.

• Natural Disasters: The effects of climate change are evident in the 10 facts about life expectancy in Lesotho as the country continues to experience drought. Therefore, this results in people growing food for their families late. Late farming is costly, sometimes people don’t harvest nothing due to draught.  

• Gender Roles: The HIV/AIDS crisis disproportionately affects women in Lesotho because they often must take in sick relatives or community members on top of performing existing domestic responsibilities.

• Few Social Services: One of the most interesting 10 facts about life expectancy in Lesotho is that Lesotho has a relatively large population of elderly citizens despite the HIV/AIDS crisis. T

• Improving Education: Education has been a consistent priority for Lesotho, and one that has yielded substantial results. After implementing free primary education, enrollment among children increased from 65 percent to 85 percent in three years.

• Water and Sanitation: Several people in Lesotho (18.2 percent) do not have access to dependably clean water despite several dams present. The water is instead transported to South Africa for profit which leaves local people thirsty. Therefore, many people are bound to drink unhealthy water which makes them sick.

• Few Accessible Doctors: Lesotho has one doctor per 20,000 people, compared to the one per 400 in the United States. This makes health care inaccessible and costly for most of Lesotho. Many patients die at the casualty simply because he or she wasn’t attended to.

• Infant, Child and Mother Mortality Rates: An important cause of the reduced life expectancy in Lesotho is an infant mortality rate of 44.6 deaths per 1,000 births and a maternal mortality rate of 487 deaths per 100,000 births.

 Other countries with low life expectancy

• Botswana – the major reason for low life expectancy is HIV/AIDS

• Nigeria (55.2 years)– high infant mortality rate is one of the reasons that cause low life expectancy in this country. It has a population of 197.2 million. Leading causes of low life expectancy:

• Illnesses
• Illiteracy
• Corruption
• Poverty

• Ivory Coast (54.6) – lack of health facilities is a major reason for low life expectancy. It has a population of 25 million. Leading causes of low life expectancy:
• Malaria
• HIV/AIDS
• Respiratory diseases
• Diarrheal diseases.

• Guinea – Ebola is the major reason for low life expectancy

• Uganda – conflicts is the major reason for low life expectancy.

• Malawi – undeveloped health care is the major reason for low life expectancy.

• South Africa – HIV/AIDS is the major reasons for low life expectancy.

• Somalia life expectancy (55.4 years)– civil war is the major reason for low life expectancy. It has a population of 15.3 million. Leading causes of low life expectancy:

• Respiratory Infection
• Pneumonia
• Lung abscesses
• Acute bronchitis

• Diarrheal diseases
• Measles
• Malnutrion
• Meningitis
• TB

• Causes of respiratory infections:
• Bad nutrition in childhood
• Low birth weight
• Air pollution
• HIV co-infection
• Vitamin D deficiency
• Lack of immunizations

• Mali (58 years)– poverty is the major reason for low life expectancy. It has a population of 19.2 million. Leading causes of low life expectancy:

• Coronary heart disease
• Stroke
• Diarrhea
• Influenza
• Pneumonia
• Malaria
• HIV/AIDS

• Cameroon (58.5 years)– political instability is the major reason for low life expectancy. Population is 24.8 million. Leading causes of low life expectancy:

• HIV/AIDS
• Influenza and pneumonia
• Stroke
• Coronary heart disease
• Diarrhea

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• Angola – Epidemic diseases such as malaria, cholera and ebola are the cause of low life expectancy.

• Burundi- Two civil war which took place in the 90s are the major cause which left the country poor.

• Chad (54.3) – lack of infrastructure, poor water sanitation are the major reasons for low life expectancy. It has a population of 15.4 million. Leading causes of low life expectancy:
• Diarrheal diseases
• Lower respiratory diseases
• HIV/AIDS
• Malaria
• Ischemic heart diseases
• Sierra Leone (53.1) – It has a population of 7.7 million. Leading causes of low life expectancy:
• Conflicts after conflicts
• Civil war
• Political coups
• Ebola virus epdemic
• High unemployment rate

• Democratic Republic of Congo – political instability and poor infrastructure are the main reasons for low life expectancy.

• Swaziland (57.7) eswatini life expectancy – HIV/AIDS and TB are the major reason why there is a low life expectancy. 26% of the population is infected with HIV/AIDS. It has a population of 1.3 million. Leading causes of low life expectancy:

• 27.20% of HIV/AIDS infection
• Diarrheal diseases
• Violence and road accidents

• Afghanistan – infant mortality rate due to recent conflicts resulted in low life expectancy.

• Zambia- poverty is the major reason for low life expectancy after international prices declined in the 90s. Lack of water supply and pandemic diseases are the major reasons for low life expectancy.

• Zimbabwe – domestic violence hindered the country from progressing this resulting in many pandemic diseases.

• Central African Republic (53) – many health-related diseases are the major cause of low life expectancy. It has a population of 4.7 million. Leading causes of low life expectancy:
• Malaria
• TB
• HIV/AIDS
• Respiratory diseases
• Diarrheal diseases

Countries with the highest life expectancy

• Canada has average life expectancy of 82 years.
• Italy has an average life expectancy of 82.2 years.
• Australia- 82.23 years
• China – 82.74 years
• Andorra – 82.78 years
• San Marino -83.29 years
• Macau – 84.53
• Singapore – 84.95
• Japan – 85 years
• Monaco – 89.7 years

The reason why Japan has a high life expectancy

• Consumption of green tea
• Eating of smaller amounts of food
• Bath culture, they bath at night
• Access to top notch health care facilities
• Good education
• DNA
• Keeping the body busy with work
• Eating soybeans
• Eating of tofu
• Eating of egg plant
• Exercising

Recap

In this article we learnt that most of the African countries have low life expectancy. Major reasons for most countries are that people get diseases. One more important thing is that we like modern food which causes diseases. Unlike other countries, Japan still eat the old generation food; tofu and this helps them to sustain a longer life amongst other reasons. If we too can still boost our immune system by consuming immune boosters such as Ganoderma products and many other products, we can be able to live longer.