The Worst Parts of Africa: Why Are the Women Still Having so Many Children?

We've seen it so often: images and footage of what life is like in some of the most terrible regions in Africa, how they need our help. Most recently American Idol personalities Ryan Seacrest and Simon Cowell took a trip to one such region and shared with the world what both saddened and astonished them. One can't help but feel compelled to end the suffering for these poor people, especially the children, when seeing it. What they showed us upon their return was powerful, disturbing and heartbreaking.

In areas like Somalia, Ethiopia and Kenya there are epidemics of starvation and AIDS literally wiping out humans at an alarming pace, and threatens to continue doing so without major intervention. Among the problems for the people living this way is a lack of not only quality healthcare, but of any type of healthcare. Just to get treated for a simple disease like Malaria is often too much to hope for. Children die every day waiting for, and unable to get, what is in the west common, easily attainable medicine.

Because of the vast number of AIDS cases in these parts of Africa, many children are becoming orphaned at a rapid rate. Many are left to fend for themselves in a land that is already plagued by famine and over-population. So it is not unreasonable for one to wonder why the adults living in conditions like these would decide that it's a good time and place to create and bring more children into the current environment.

There could be as simple an explanation as the fact that we are all humans, and possess the instinct to procreate. Perhaps this cannot just be shut off when the environment becomes unsuitable for the result.

Or is it that many of the people in this part of the world don't believe in birth control? Or do they simply not have access to it? It is not only pregnancy they are failing to prevent, but the furious spread of the AIDS virus as well. Are there not enough programs for these people to be educated on condom use and how to avoid contracting HIV?

It is even more unfortunate that for the millions who do contract the virus, they are surely given a death sentence with a fast-approaching final date. What is treated and managed for decades here with the right medications, is left to quickly destroy the bodies it takes up residence in over there. Yet it still somehow sounds like a good idea to have sex with each other while all these risks loom overhead. Does this make sense?

The practice of reaching out to the prosperous nations for aid to these regions has offered what little hope and chance there is for these people. There are programs in place to prompt donations of money, medicine, medical equipment, food and many other resources unavailable for much of Africa. Perhaps there should also be energy and resources put into making birth control and condoms available as well.

At least until life in these parts of the world improves, each child born from here on out will be given a terrifying and tragic introduction to the world. If the adults are willing to continually bring children into these conditions where they will starve, not be treated for illnesses or be orphaned before they're 7th birthdays, then there is yet another sad and disturbing issue to be dealt with.