What diseases do they have?
•malaria, yellow fever, East African sleeping sickness and AIDs/HIV
Why do they have so many diseases?
•The long human prescence in Africa has caused diseases to thrive
•These arose when microbes causing disease in animals crossed species lines to evolve into a human disease.
•For a microbe that is already adapted to one species it is difficult to adapt to another species and requires a lot of evolutionary time
•Much more time has been available in Africa than in any other part of the planet
•Thats half the answer to Africa's disease burden
•The other half is that the animal species most closely related to humans (those whose microbes required the least adaption to jump species) are the African great apes and monkeys
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