Diseases

Poverty and health

People’s health is severely affected by poverty. Many of the factors associated with poverty, such as malnutrition, make people vulnerable to illness. The majority of the world’s poor live in countries where good health care is a privilege of the rich, while poor people lack access to appropriate treatment and care. As a result, in poorer countries, life expectancy is significantly lower overall than in richer countries, infant and child mortality are higher, and women’s chances of dying in childbirth are greater.

HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis (TB), and malaria are all most common in poorer countries, where they kill over six million people a year. Indeed, HIV and TB are both often referred to as a ‘diseases of poverty’. The number of deaths associated with HIV/AIDS in sub-Saharan Africa could be greatly reduced if people living with HIV had access to appropriate treatment for opportunistic infections, particularly TB, and to antiretroviral drugs. If pregnant women have appropriate antenatal and postnatal care, the risk of HIV transmission to their child is reduced to as low as one per cent.

In poor households, one or two people often support a large number of dependents. If they become ill, the household falls further into poverty. The household’s few possessions, such as livestock, may have to be sold and the household may get into debt. Any children in school have to leave because the household cannot pay their school fees or buy books or uniform; even where schooling is free, children may be sent out to bring some money home, whether by working on the farm, providing child labor, begging on the streets, or even from sex work or stealing. Once children are removed from school it is difficult for them to get the skills or knowledge that they need to find good jobs and they become trapped, like the adults in their household, into the cycle of poverty and ill health.

Where whole communities are living in extreme poverty, such as many of those in areas of high HIV prevalence, traditional social and family networks tend to weaken or even break down. Collective action is very difficult. People tend to feel that they do not have control over their lives and they may become isolated and marginalized, without a voice in the decisions or policies that affect their lives.

Measles is the leading vaccine-preventable childhood killer in the world

• Each year, 23 million children suffer from measles and one million die from the disease

• In Africa alone, 38 million children under the age of five are at risk from measles and approximately 282,000 children die from the disease
   

Each year, a disease barely remembered by most Americans kills nearly 480,000 children, 282,000 in Africa alone. Global measles deaths are down from 873,000 annually in 1999, making a 39% reduction as of 2003. Measles deaths in Africa have decreased by nearly half in part due to the Measles Initiative. This fact makes measles the single leading cause of death among children in Africa - more than HIV, more than tuberculosis, and more than malnutrition, despite the availability of safe, effective and a relatively inexpensive vaccine for more than forty years. In a place where health conditions are extremely poor, living conditions are more than difficult, and access to health care is minimal, measles can be easily prevented with a simple vaccination.

"Measles is still a great problem in Africa. American Red Cross is a global partner to fight this easily preventable disease," said Alice Uwase Anukur, Deputy Secretary of the Uganda Red Cross National Society.

TB is a major killer of children in poor countries

TB kills more young people than any other single infectious disease. Every minute two children die of TB worldwide.

Tuberculosis in children can be neglected. Pediatric TB does not have a high priority in many developing countries as fewer children than adults have the disease and children are not usually infectious, and often, limited resources mean that infectious cases have priority.

Vaccination is not 100% effective. The TB vaccine, BCG, does limit some of the severe forms of tuberculosis which are unique to young children, but by no means prevents them all. Tens of thousands "immunized" children in the developing world still suffer from tuberculosis meningitis and other forms of disease.

Children are highly susceptible to tuberculosis. The power to resist TB infection is normally poor in the first 5 years of life. The resistance can be further reduced by malnutrition, HIV, other childhood infections and worm infestations – all too common childhood conditions in poor countries. It has been estimated that as many as one third of the world’s population is infected with TB, and an estimated 20-50% of children who live in households where an adult has active tuberculosis become infected. Children are especially vulnerable to infection from household contacts as they are often held close and breathed on. The risk is particularly high in the developing world where family size is large, living quarters are crowded and more than half the population are children.

Traditional diagnosis of TB in children is ineffective. A vast number of children infected remain undiagnosed – creating a reservoir of future adult disease. Diagnosis is difficult in children, and often fatally delayed – early symptoms and signs of tuberculosis in children are common and easily missed. Lung TB is particularly difficult to diagnose early as children’s lungs react differently than adults, and they have little or no cough (thus not being able to provide sputum for testing) and, even if produced, microscopical examination only occasionally reveals the characteristic tubercle bacilli.

TB can have devastating long term effects on children who can be left deaf, blind and/or totally paralyzed from TB meningitis, even after it is cured. Spread of infection to the bone can cause deformities of the spine (hunchback) or other permanent disabilities.

TB exacerbates poverty – it makes the patient and their family poorer because they may have to pay for treatment themselves, and even if TB drugs are free there is often a cost of traveling to clinics. If they cannot afford this they may default from treatment – leading to the added complications drug resistance. Children with TB lose out in the vital years of their education, which can affect their future wage-earning capacity.

Sources:
http://www.healthlink.org.uk/pubs/pov-overview.html
http://www.tbalert.org/worldwide/children.php
http://www.measlesinitiative.org/problem2.asp

Consequences of Child Poverty

Hunger Poor children daily face the problem of lack of food. The hunger is the most common consequence of child poverty. Read More

Homeless Child poverty leaves children on the street without a roof over its head. Homelessness disallows children to educate and health care. Read More

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