A disease of poverty

Malaria and poverty are closely associated with each other. Malaria occurs in the world's poorest countries, and is both the cause and the effect of poverty and vice versa. The disease sustains itself because malaria blocks the human and economic capital that are necessary to get the disease under control and because it affects the poor rural inhabitants who cannot afford a mosquito net and do not have access to the right treatment when they get sick.

Malaria has a negative effect on the health and economic growth of individuals, regions and entire nations, with the disease sometimes taking on epidemic proportions. Malaria has a paralysing effect on local communities: people infected with malaria cannot work and have no income. Entire areas are plunged into poverty with little to no prospect of improvement. In financial terms, the disease costs Africa 12 billion dollars a year: in prevention, health care and lost productivity. This is an enormous burden. The emotional, social and physical damage to the people is impossible to express in numbers.

In the short term, resistance to malaria drugs is resulting in a rise in the number of malaria cases and consequently in an increase in treatment costs. Malaria deaths also incur costs through lost productivity. The necessity for preventive measures in increasingly larger areas is also driving up the costs. Moreover, malaria-infected children and adults in need of blood transfusions run the risk of becoming infected with HIV or Hepatitis C. Studies have revealed that the emotional, social and physical burden is so high that families are prepared to give up their daily earnings if doing so would enable them to prevent malaria and avoid experiencing the pain and uncertainty it causes.

In the long term, malaria is slowing down economic growth in a number of ways. Countries with malaria are poorer and have an economic growth that is 1.3% lower than countries without malaria. Malaria can hamper trade and foreign investments, the repercussions of which are felt by a country's entire population: multinationals avoid establishing themselves in malaria-infected areas and tourists decide to visit malaria-free areas. This means a loss of income. Children who contract malaria more than once are behind in their physical and cognitive development; they miss school more and perform less well. Contracting malaria more than once is also the cause of malnutrition, anaemia and an increased susceptibility to other diseases (such as HIV/AIDS). Malaria also impacts the demographic composition of a country: a family typically reacts to the higher chance of their children dying of malaria by having more children. The population grows while the average level of health care and education per child declines. Mothers with many children are also less capable of working, which means that the family's income decreases as well.

Every year, at least 1 million malaria deaths are entered in the hospital records. The real number is probably much higher because not every malaria death, and in particular those of young children, in remote rural areas is recorded. And not every death can be attributed to malaria because death can also be caused by a combination of diseases and circumstances. That is why figures on the number of malaria deaths vary between at least 1 million (recorded) and as many as 3 million (estimated) a year. In countries where malaria is endemic, 250 million cases of malaria are reported every year. The affected people cannot work or take care of their children. The result is negative productivity and lower income. The African continent is the worst affected by malaria.

The biggest financial obstacle to getting malaria under control is the lack of funds. It is estimated that 2 to 3 billion dollars a year are needed to effectively get malaria under control. Per year, African governments, donor governments and the United Nations put no more than 200 million dollars towards malaria. This money is used to procure and distribute insecticide-treated mosquito nets, educate the people, tackle the malaria mosquito's living environment and treat the 500 million people who become infected with malaria each year with the right drugs.

The cyclical effect of poverty-disease-poverty is that without intervention, the disease will spread and poverty will become even more harrowing. Today, poverty is at the top of the list of many celebrities and governments. It is time for everyone else to become involved and make more money available. By alleviating poverty, we might just be able to reduce the number of deaths caused by malaria. And by reducing the number of cases of the disease and deaths caused by malaria, we might just be able to solve the poverty problem.