For this week’s activity blog, I have decided to pick Ecuador as my country. I was born there but have spent most of my formative years here in the United States. Truthfully it has been a while since I have done any sort of report about Ecuador and I know I’ve never done a report about theoretical models when applied to health issues. It has also been an embarrassingly long time since I’ve researched the statistical breakdowns of Ecuador. I really hope to learn more about varying health initiatives in Ecuador.

Ecuador is in the upper left-hand side of South America in between Colombia (to the North) and Peru to the South. It got its name from its location on the Equator. Its current population is 12.47 million, 26% of which are children 0-14 years old. I found it extremely surprising that the infant mortality rate is 15.9 deaths per 1,000 births compared to the United States (5.7 deaths per 1,000 births). This is still high considering the health and nutrition initiatives organizations, like UNICEF, have put into place. Most of the UNICEF initiatives take into consideration the individuals of the population that live in remote or peri-urban neighborhoods. The GDP per capita is estimated to be $11,500 and is mostly dependent on the petroleum resources. The contraceptive prevalence of married women aged 15-49 from 2008-2012 is 72.7%. This doesn’t consider women or men who aren’t married within the same age range. Nor does it examine or analyze the use of sexual and reproductive health services to adolescents.

Sites Refrenced

https://reproductive-health-journal.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12978-017-0294-5

https://www.unicef.org/ecuador/english/activities_31273.htm

https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/geos/ec.html

https://www.unicef.org/infobycountry/ecuador_statistics.html