Malaria and Poverty: The Interconnection

It has long been recognized that a malarious community is an impoverished community- T. H. Weller, a Nobel laureate in medicine

Daniel Mwampemba is a farmer, in Kwale. Three years ago, just as the planting season had started, Mwampemba fell ill with server bout of malaria. For several weeks Mwampemba’s 3hectares of land remained untilled. Mwampemba’s wife had given birth a week earlier thus could not till the land. She now had an extra burden to care for her husband. With the little savings from the earlier harvest, she could sustain the family and take care of Mwampemba’s medical bills.

Not all families would have the sustaining power as Mwampemba’s, and often the families accounts get deplated with medical expenses, as more money is spent yet none  is received t fill in the financial gap created. Even for families that get to fill this gap, it sometimes takes a while before they can re-invest the amount spent taking care of patients affected by malaria.

Whilst the fight against malaria is often looked at from a medical perspective; greater focus should be put on its economic and social impact.Thus the fight against malaria should take a multi-sectoral approach. Malaria will not only impact an individuals health, but also a countries health.

“If one person in my village is sick, we are all sick,” says Charles Mogaka, Nyamira County Health Promotion officer, “it affects all of us”

Hard as it is to comprehend this, a critical view of the implication of the disease and one realises it will not only affect one individual but an entire society. View this for example; if a person dies of malaria related illness, the village is involved in raising funds to aid the family, because we all become affected.

Malaria imposes substantial costs to both individuals and governments. Costs to individuals and their families may include purchase of drugs for treating malaria at home; expenses for travel to, and treatment at, dispensaries and clinics; lost days of work; absence from school; expenses for preventive measures; expenses for burial in case of deaths.

Moreover the economic effect of malaria on infected individuals may greatly exceed the direct costs of any single episode of the disease. Repeated bouts of malaria tend to hinder a child’s physical and cognitive development, and may reduce a child’s attendance and performance at school. Furthermore, repeated bouts of malaria may expose individuals to chronic malnutrition and to increased vulnerability to other diseases.

Costs to governments include maintenance, supply and staffing of health facilities; purchase of drugs and supplies; public health interventions against malaria, such as insecticide spraying or distribution of Long Lasting insecticide-treated bed nets(LLINs); lost days of work with resulting loss of income; and lost opportunities for joint economic ventures and tourism; Tourists shun regions with high malaria, as do multinational firms choosing the location of foreign investments.

With such implications its estimated that at least $12 billion are lost per year in Direct costs (for example, illness, treatment, premature death), according to the Center for Disease Control (CDC). The cost in lost economic growth is many times more than that.

Malaria and poverty are thus intimately connected. Lest it be assumed though that the high levels of malaria in poor countries or counties as for Kenya are consequences of poverty; malaria is geographically specific. The ecological conditions that support the more efficient malaria mosquito vectors primarily determine the distribution and intensity of the disease.

Malaria is not a simple consequence of poverty. The wealth of the household, however, does play a substantial role in determining whether a child receives treatment for fever and influences the kind of treatment. Poor families very often lack the resources to obtain proper treatment of the disease even in complicated and life-threatening cases. Poverty alleviation strategies should therefore recognize the importance of effective antimalaria interventions, since the poor by themselves are unable to escape the burdens of the disease.