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. 2011 Sep;25(3):611-22, ix.
doi: 10.1016/j.idc.2011.05.004.

Poverty, global health, and infectious disease: lessons from Haiti and Rwanda

Marcella M Alsan  1 , Michael Westerhaus, Michael Herce, Koji Nakashima, Paul E Farmer
Affiliations

Poverty, global health, and infectious disease: lessons from Haiti and Rwanda

Marcella M Alsan et al. Infect Dis Clin North Am. 2011 Sep.

Abstract

Poverty and infectious diseases interact in complex ways. Casting destitution as intractable, or epidemics that afflict the poor as accidental, erroneously exonerates us from responsibility for caring for those most in need. Adequately addressing communicable diseases requires a biosocial appreciation of the structural forces that shape disease patterns. Most health interventions in resource-poor settings could garner support based on cost/benefit ratios with appropriately lengthy time horizons to capture the return on health investments and an adequate accounting of externalities; however, such a calculus masks the suffering of inaction and risks eroding the most powerful incentive to act: redressing inequality.

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Figures

Fig. 1
Fig. 1
(A) Estimated TB incidence by country, 2009. (Adapted from WHO Global Tuberculosis Control, 2010.) (B) Global poverty map.
Fig. 2
Fig. 2
Life expectancy at birth, total (years) versus log gross domestic product (GDP) per capita (constant US $2000). Data are from the most recent year of complete data, 2007, and include 146 countries with a population more than 1,000,000.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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